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TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

COPYRIGHT, 1900, Llbrarv nr r* 

kiorary of Conifriffc 
BYLOTHROP ^fftoeoflL 

rt«ffUt«r of Copyright^ 



PUBLISHING 
COMPANY. 






5SS35 



SECOND COPY, 






Nfltfaootj ^regB 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 

Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



To 

Collis P. Huntington 

in grateful remembrance of 
many kindnesses • • • • 



Hong Kong 

J J November^ ^^99 



As Talked in the Sanctum 



I 

WE were speaking the other day of 
magazines, — cut and uncut, — and 
I maintained with some warmth that, to me, 
a magazine was incomplete unless it was 
accompanied by a paper-cutter. Possibly I 
was thinking somewhat vainly of a certain 
paper-knife that represented a Malayan kris^ 
with a handle inlaid with yellow gold from 
Mt. Ophir, — albeit I was serious in my 
advocacy of the uncut pages of my favorite 
magazines. 

Both the Poet and the Contributor smiled 

pityingly at my flushed face, and said that I 

would soon be insisting upon having all our 

printing done on an old Franklin press, and 

5 



6 As Talked in the Sanctum 

the staff putting on perukes, as it is the 
fashion nowadays to prefer the things that 
were to the things that be. 

There is something deliciously fascinating 
to me in a big arm-chair, a magazine redo- 
lent of the odors of the press, an open 
fire, and a paper-cutter — not a penknife. 
I smoke; so, if I am allowed, I add a 
Havana to the list. 

I am jealous of my solitude at such times. 
I love the sharp buzz and low crinkle of 
the stiff paper as the blade runs swiftly up 
the virgin page. A little shower of finely 
powdered flakes, dry and impalpable, marks 
the course of the ivory knife, and sifts softly 
down on my sleeve. 

I can change the arch-fire for a burst of 
summer sunshine and the shady nook of 
a deep veranda ; I can substitute for the 
leather-bound chair a long rattan one, but 
the neatly trimmed pages of a modern 
magazine irritate me, — my harmless illu- 
sion that was created for me is gone. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 7 

There is no privacy in the machine-made 
thing. 

I would as soon think of throwing the 
Sanctum open to the world, as lose my even- 
ing dissipation with magazine and paper- 
cutter. In my fancy I am on a voyage of 
discovery to scenes and lands that have been 
my day-dreams. As I cut the first page I 
find myself in Egypt, — in the shadow of 
the pyramids, with the yellow Nile flowing, 
calm and stately, between rows of yellow 
palms, — in the narrow, tortuous streets of 
Cairo, among Jews and Copts, Hindoos and 
Medes, men in skirts and women in panta- 
loons, dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Cappa- 
docia, in Pontus and Pamphylia, — amid 
strings of camels laden with red beans and 
golden-yellow lentils, — water-carriers hug- 
ging uncanny goatskins, and naked Nubians 
staggering under great hair sacks of corn. 
I turn over the pages ; my paper-cutter 
sings quietly ; a little flurry of white dust 
falls unnoticed on my clothes, and I have 



8 As Talked in the Sanctum 

taken up the thread of a serial where I laid 
it reluctantly by the month before. 

For a half-hour I read, and cut, and read, 
and forget the spluttering fire before me. 
Possibly I am living with Bret Harte's char- 
acters, — my old, true friends, — here on this 
sunny Pacific slope, or, mayhap, with Mr. 
Howells* people of society and business ; 
or, now, Stevenson, Kipling, or Craddock 
cause the pages to sparkle. But my voy- 
age is not ended, when I at last draw a deep 
sigh as I come to the dreaded words, " Con- 
tinued in our next." In a moment my eyes 
run down a charming bit of verse of society, 
and up to a well-known name that beckons 
me on to a tour through the galleries of the 
Louvre, or down the dim, translucent aisles 
of the Cathedral of Cologne, with its mar- 
vellous windows and lace-like stone carvings. 

My knife severs two more pages. " What 
next ? " I think. I am not disappointed. 
I meditatively run my ivory plaything 
through my hair as the last treasure of the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 9 

great monthly lies open before me. My 
cigar has gone out, — my placid voyage 
among the storied pages ended for the 
nonce. 

Of course, I admit that there are people 
who never read magazines, cut or uncut ; 
but then there are people who, since the 
time of Adam, have run after strange gods, 
and there are others who even prefer the 
Sunday newspapers to the best of maga- 
zines. Between books and magazines there 
can be no rivalry. Between magazines and 
Sunday newspapers there is none. 

There are books on my library shelves 
that I read with pleasure, and cannot pick 
up without experiencing a sensation of 
delight, although I have, to some extent, 
forgotten their plots and' often their charac- 
ters. On turning over their pages, snatching 
a word here and a sentence there, running 
down a page or over a chapter, trying to dis- 
cover what endears them to me, I find that 



lo As Talked in the Sanctum 

this lies not always in what is written or what 
is pictured, but the associations and scenes 
that the novel recalls. I find that I have, 
in the past, in some manner, insensibly but 
indelibly, added to the scenery of the book 
the scenery of the place at which it was 
read ; with its characters I associate the peo- 
ple I knew at the time. Its sunsets are the 
sunsets gazed upon as I read, not the sun- 
sets of which I read. I cannot separate the 
book from the place ; I would not if I 
could. 

The quaint mountain heroes of Charles 
Egbert Craddock's " The Prophet of the 
Great Smoky Mountain '* recall an autumn 
trip down the Chesapeake Bay, from Balti- 
more to Old Point Comfort ; excursions 
into the charming realm of that picturesque 
old Virginian Atlantis, the East Shore ; 
rides over its sandy roads amid the resin- 
ous odor of the pine woods ; visits in fas- 
cinating old colonial mansions ; twisting, 
snake-like lagoons bordered by funereal 



As Talked in the Sanctum 1 1 

cypress trees hung with ghostly gray moss ; 
sober, rickety little towns ; ruinous board 
shanties filled with genial black faces ; ter- 
rapin and snipe. The rugged, denuded 
balds of Tennessee can never escape the 
companionship of the marshes and sand 
dunes of Maryland and Virginia. 

"Jane Eyre '* carries me away to Southern 
Kansas and Northern Indian Territory. I 
take again a long, hot, dusty ride in the 
caboose of a cattle train, and through a dirty 
window catch glimpses of dirtier Indian tepees 
and dried sunflowers, on an endless plain 
of burnt buffalo grass. 

" Middlemarch '* finds me ever in a big 
arm-chair in my father's study, with the 
howling winds of frozen Ontario in my ears. 
I can see my father's silvered hair, and hear 
the sound of his faltering steps. 

The ice and snow of that winter melt 
before the picture that is summoned up by 
Dumas's glorious " Musketeers." It is that 
of a tropical island in a sunlit sea ; spiced 



12 As Talked in the Sanctum 

breezes from almond and clove trees ; the 
sound of a great cocoanut dropping in the 
warm sand at my feet; the red sails of a 
Malay tongkang; the somnolent washing of 
tepid waters over a coral reef; the nude 
forms of brown-eyed natives. D'Artagnan, 
Athos, Aramis, Porthos, Richelieu, and Louis 
Quatorze acted their parts for me under a 
great almond tree in the Straits of Malacca. 
Strangely enough, Daudet's pathetic 
"Jack" brings back the Nile, the Pyra- 
mids, water-carriers, the date-palm, yellow 
sands, and swaying camels laden with cotton, 
on the deserts along the Suez ; while Ebers's 
" Egyptian Princess " holds tenaciously to 
the Boulevards des Italiens and Capucines, 
the Place de la Concorde, and the golden 
dome of Les Invalides. So the iterative 
splash of the water-wheels of the Nile, the 
lunge of the bullocks as they go down 
through the soft mud to drink, the cry of 
the muezzin before the mosque of Hassan, 
the play of the fountains in the Jardin des 



As Talked in the Sanctum 13 

Plantes, the flicker of the converging lines 
of street-lamps, and the deep bells of Notre 
Dame are inextricably mixed ; only Paris is 
summoned up by the Egyptian novel, and 
Egypt by the Parisian. 

It was during an autumn trip through 
the mountains and sage-bush plains of 
Idaho that I read " Far from the Madding 
Crowd." The title of the book would have 
been apropos to my surroundings, had I not 
been in company with a detachment of 
Uncle Sam's soldiers and all the parapher- 
nalia of a moving camp. I read the book 
in snatches, as we camped, now under the 
sheltering crags of a rugged spur of the 
Bitter Root during the noonday heat ; now 
in the cool, almost chilling shadows of a 
canon, to which the reflections of our many 
fires lent an added touch of weirdness ; or 
now among desert wastes of played-out 
placers. The quiet heaths and sober country 
homes of provincial England and the homely 
folk that peopled them, stand side by side 



14 As Talked in the Sanctum 

with vast mountain solitudes, mining camps, 
Indian tepees, and all the rugged peculi- 
arities of Western life. 

Between the lines of Warner's " Little 
Journey in the World,'* I see a journey to 
an old world ; an ocean trip over the Pacific. 
I smell the salt air of northern latitudes and 
drink in the warm breezes of the Japanese 
coasts. I catch myself lifting my eyes from 
its pages to follow the bounding course of a 
fat, awkward dolphin, or to rush to the rail 
and gaze out upon a black spot that the 
quartermaster assures me is a whale. A 
storm and a touch of mal-de-mer break into 
the thread of the story for a few days, and 
then I suddenly neglect its fascinations in 
the more insistent fascinations of the harbor 
of Yokohama, filled with its junks, house- 
boats, and sampans, 

A delightful trip down the St. Lawrence 
to Montreal and Quebec, and into the heart 
of the White Mountains, is associated with 
Stockton's quaint story, " The Late Mrs. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 15 

Null," while my famous predecessor's "Snow 
Bound at Eagle's" and a little hunting 
camp in the north woods of Pennsylvania 
are forever joined together. Haggard's 
" Col. Quaritch, V. C." and two picturesque 
weeks spent in the palace of the Sultan of 
Johore — " 

The Contributor. — " See here! I move, out 
of pure revenge for past slights, that the 
speaker begin chronologically with the days 
of the * Huggermuggers ' and * Robinson 
Crusoe,' and come on down, regularly, to the 
* Yellow Aster.'" 

The Artist, — "I am curious to know if 
the ' Yellow Aster ' was perused at the North 
Pole." 

The F arson, — "If so, the combination 
was a happy one." 

The Sanctum, — " Fie on the Parson ! " 

The Office Boy, — " Proof! " 



II 



IF our chats on indifferent topics lack the 
true " back-log " flavor that all readers 
of Charles Dudley Warner and Ik Marvel 
have learned to expect when a bevy of indi- 
viduals like unto ourselves begins to talk, it 
is all owing to our want of big arm-chairs and 
an old-fashioned open fireplace. We have a 
sort of a two by two-and-a-half hole in the 
wall, back of the Reader's desk, that our 
landlord assured us was a fireplace, but we 
have never investigated it, and we have 
nothing substantial to burn in it. 

The Reader is the only member of the 
Circle that has ever seriously broached the 
subject of experimenting with it. But as all 
the emanations of our collective brains have, 
sooner or later, to pass through the Reader's 
hands before being immortalized in print, we 
are, as a body, naturally, though guardedly, 

i6 



As Talked in the Sanctum 17 

sceptical of his disinterestedness. An open 
fire would never do in an editorial sanctum. 
In fact, I never heard of one being so badly- 
placed. It is certainly to the purpose, be it 
enthusiastically antique or garishly jin-de- 
siecky in your own study, in the quietude of 
your own home. Then if, in a moment 
of sanity, you commit a manuscript of your 
own making to its purging flames, — well 
and good ! you commit the act in cold 
blood, with malice aforethought. But in 
the Sanctum, — where there are a thousand 
and one little annoyances and a thousand 
and one little interruptions, — a faulty con- 
struction, a bit of bad grammar, a misspelled 
word, a sentence lacking a predicate, or an 
illegible " hand-write," is apt to cause the 
coolest of us — a cool man is often lazy or 
stupid, so none of us bid for that distinction 
— to be hasty, and to do things that he 
would wish undone. 

That the Poet's verses or the Contribu- 
tor's tragedy should find their way into the 



1 8 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Reader's ever handy Gehenna, would, with 
all due respect to them, not be as serious a 
loss, I think even they will admit, as the 
disappearance of the unnumbered manu- 
scripts that come weekly to the Reader's 
hand with the deprecating little request, "In 
case they are not found available, kindly 
return with the enclosed postage." 

It is possible to rescue from the waste- 
basket a manuscript which its gentle author 
values above all earthly price, and in the 
inditing of which he has refused to be fet- 
tered by the absurd rules of Murray or the 
unreasonable dictums of Webster ; but " all 
the king's oxen and all the king's men '* 
cannot undo the five minutes' work of a 
poetic arch-fire and the Reader's inexcusable 
rancor. 

Yes, an arch-fire, however much it might 
stimulate the quality or flow of our Sanctum 
talk, would surely bankrupt the magazine in 
a month. We must be contented with our 
painted radiator and big south window. 



As Talked in the Sanchim 19 

The Contributor is, in politics, a pessimist 
of the most troublesome kind. No one 
ever accused him of being a Republican, and 
he would leave the room in high dudgeon if 
he thought that we considered him a Demo- 
crat. He is not a Mugwump, for he dis- 
likes theories and believes that to the victor 
belongs the spoils, consequently he is not 
a purist ; while, of all sorts and conditions 
of men, a " reformer " is a thing he most 
despises. He is simply a citizen of the 
republic, who believes that "horse-sense" 
is the best practical guide and that it is re- 
quired in governmental affairs quite as much 
as in household matters. 

To show his utter contempt for all parties, 
he once drew up a scheme of government 
with the following men at the head of it ; 
that he invaded the graveyards did not em- 
barrass him ; his names only stood for quali- 
ties, he said : — 

President, George Washington; Vice-Presi- 
dent, George William Curtis ; Secretary of 



20 As Talked in the Sanctum 

State, James G. Blaine ; Secretary of the 
Treasury, William M. Stewart ; Secretary 
of War, Benjamin F. Butler ; Secretary of 
the Navy, Captain Alfred T. Mahan. 

" I am in favor of more dignified exclu- 
siveness at the White House ; more true, 
progressive Americanism in the State Depart- 
ment, and a broader conception of the 
national needs in the Treasury," he explained. 
" The Army wants less red tape and more 
organization and effectiveness ; the Navy, as 
many modern war-ships as are owned by any 
other first-class power, or more. We want 
Americanism instead of partisanship ; horse- 
sense instead of sounding phrases." 

The Poet. — " The Contributor is like the 
minister who was engaged by a little Con- 
necticut town to preach hell-fire and brim- 
stone, and board himself" 

The Contributor sniffed disdainfully, and 
ran a hand through his scanty hair. " The 
tariff bill has just been settled again, after a 
year's struggle and debate in the midst of 



As Talked in the Sanctum 21 

the hardest times the country has ever seen/' 
he said. "Where are the reforms that 
Mr. Cleveland so vaingloriously promised ? 
Where are the vast benefits that the laborer 
was to receive ? Where are the good times 
that the new tariff was to bring, and which 
was to have been passed by a special session 
of Congress within a month after Mr. Cleve- 
land came into power ? Where are last 
winter*s snows ? Is there any * common 
sense ' in tearing up our entire system of 
tariff laws every four years, making them the 
sport of trusts and corporations, reducing 
them to a basis of stocks, oil, and pork, — a 
thing to gamble on, — just to please some 
insane idea of a useless party ? " 

The Reader, — "I prefer to answer for last 
winter's snows." 

The Contributor, — " Does not this Wilson 
Bill strike you all as a pitiful bit of statecraft, 
when the fact is taken into consideration that 
five hundred brains labored over it for twelve 
months ? Would you exchange for it the 



22 As Talked in the Sanctum 

work of the man's brain that discovered the 
telegraph, or the work of the man's brain 
that invented the sewing-machine ? Does it 
compare for one moment with Newton's Law 
of Gravitation or even with Blaine's doctrine 
of Reciprocity? If the Wilson Bill, the 
plaything of the Sugar Trust and the laugh- 
ing stock of Europe, is the best we can 
expect from our five or six hundred repre- 
sentatives, it is time that Free Trade be in- 
corporated in our Constitution." 

The Parson. — "It strikes me that we 
have listened to like tirades on the same sub- 
ject from our colleague before. For one, I 
trust that the tariff fight has been a lesson to 
our legislators, as the strike was to our capi- 
talists, and that, now that it is at last settled, 
the banks will open their vaults and money 
will be easier." 

The Poet, — "I rise to submit for the 
Sanctum's approval, the following motto 
for Mr. Cleveland's office wall : ' When in 
doubt, go duck-shooting.' " 



As Talked in the Sanctwn 23 

The Occasional Caller, — " For one, I pin 
my faith to the Democratic tariff." 

The Contributor, — " Take my advice and 
use a safety-pin.'* 

The Office Boy, — " Proof 1 " 



Ill 

WE were aimlessly discussing the Chi- 
nese-Japanese-Korean War, when the 
Parson entered the room, accompanied by 
our Occasional Visitor. We were unaffect- 
edly thankful for the interruption. I think 
we were growing blase ; then, too, the sun 
was pouring recklessly into our big south 
window, flooding the Artist's table and 
spreading among us a spirit of benevolent 
discontent. The Artist should have pulled 
down the shade, which he did not do ; no 
one else felt called upon to make the exer- 
tion, and the Office Boy was out after proof 
The Contributor, who had taken part in 
Sherman's March to the Sea, and was not 
ashamed of it, had been maintaining with his 
usual " servigrousness," that war Vv^as an ele- 
ment, not an accident of humanity ; that 
H 



As Talked in the Sanctum 25 

every war marked an onward step in the 
march of civilization ; that it was as much of 
a necessity now as it was when the Lord sent 
out the hosts of Israel to do battle with the 
Philistines. 

"It is the human expression of a divine 
axiom, — fear begets wisdom," he had just 
remarked. " A race that fears neither God 
nor man eats itself up ; or, as the Bible puts 
it, a ' nation that will not serve God must 
perish.^ " 

This last was thrown out after the Parson 
made his entry, and was meant for him. 
The Contributor honestly thinks he is wily ; 
but his sophistry is, broadly speaking, too 
palpable to raise even a pitying smile. 

The Parson coughed deprecatingly, — a 
ministerial clearing of the decks for action, 
as it were. When the Parson was younger, 
he had a chance to turn the other cheek and 
remain safely at home when his country was 
in danger; he went to the front — as a pri- 
vate — and stayed there a year after the Con- 



26 As Talked in the Sanctum 

tributor returned with the wound in his hip 
that has so much to do with the acridity of 
his temper. For the last twenty-odd years 
the Parson has prescribed the doctrine of 
peace and good will in a fashionable church 
that has high gothic arches, among which 
his voice at times plays hide-and-seek, and 
a double row of heavy pseudo-granite pil- 
lars, behind which he is, as often, " tho' lost 
to view to memory dear." In the winter- 
time the hot air from the church furnaces 
ascends to the twilight of the groined ceil- 
ings, there to keep company with the good 
man's voice, to the shivering discomfort of 
his listeners. 

We have chaffed him many times about 
this absurd style of building the churches 
of his denomination, but he always smiles 
good-naturedly, asks why we insist on com- 
ing Sunday after Sunday, the bare-faced 
fisher, and insists that we would not feel at 
home listening to our Bible lesson in the 
orchestra chairs of the Baldwin. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 27 

He may be right ; still it is no argument. 
Gothic churches are to blame for more pneu- 
monia and colds in the head than all the fogs 
that ever came in through the Golden Gate. 

The F arson, — " I have heard the same 
thing charged to the account of funerals. 
The arguments are all on the side of cre- 
mation ; still, the old-fashioned burial holds 
its popularity." 

The Reader. — " Last Sunday I sat for an 
hour behind a mottled pillar in the Parson's 
cathedral. I heard fourteen words, and did 
not escape the collection plate. I left in 
anything but a Sunday state of mind." 

When Westminster Abbey was built, our 
ancestors existed in stone houses-of-refuge 
with oiled paper in the windows. To-day, 
the poorest of us live in houses that contain 
conveniences that Croesus, Esquire, could 
not have bought, and we continue to wor- 
ship in small Westminster Abbeys. 

The Contributor. — "Tut, tut! You are 
wandering from the question. I was say- 



28 As Talked in the Sanctum 

ing that war is a necessity, — at least it is 
inevitable. In the present Chino-Japanese 
embroglio there may be no high principle 
involved. Well and good ! The Japanese 
have in twenty years lived five centuries of 
national life. To have lived through the 
transition state of modern Japan ought to 
make one feel preternaturally old. Discuss- 
ing Darwinism, parliamentary institutions, 
and scientific belligerence, Japan is yet, in 
time, but a step removed from the Middle 
Ages. The old Samuri who, not further 
back than the centennial year, greeted us 
on the streets of the then treaty port of 
Kanagawa, wore a cue and two swords ; 
to-day, but for a certain obliqueness of eyes 
and scantiness of beard, he might pass for 
an American, in his neat suit of dittoes and 
black high-hat. Commodore Perry's guns 
began what Japan's guns will perfect, — the 
complete Americanizing of Japan. Withal, 
the Japanese are wise in their day, far-seeing 
in their policy. When the United States 



As Talked in the Sanctum 29 

closed her doors to the teeming population 
of the Celestial Empire, Japan was quick to 
recognize the fact that her salvation and 
international importance lay in discarding her 
own artistic dress for one of Lowell shoddy, 
substituting a democracy for an oligarchy, 
buying a navy and opening schools, an idea 
which was carried out with a parrot-like imi- 
tativeness and an owl-like wisdom. Its his- 
torical uniqueness lies rather in its rapid and 
thorough fulfilment than in its conception." 

The Occasional Visitor. — " There is noth- 
ing slow about the Japanese tutelary simula- 
crum of Father Time ! '' 

The Contributor. — " This war, moreover, 
will do more to open China to the world 
than a thousand years of commerce, mis- 
sions, and intercourse. Whether Japan is 
the victor or China successfully resists her 
attacks, makes no difference. The vast 
stagnant pool has been stirred, and the 
poison that has lurked over it must rise. 
The only thing I fear is, that, when once 



30 As Talked in the Sanctum 

the great Chinese hive begins to swarm, 
there will be no stopping it." 

The Parson. — " Then you admit that war 
is not an unmixed blessing. As I read his- 
tory, war has no good results except when 
there is an overshadowing principle at stake. 
Our two wars with England and the Civil 
war, like the war of the Reformation, the 
defeat of the Spanish Armada, the expulsion 
of the Saracens from Spain, are entirely 
different affairs from this China-Japan war, 
the guerilla fights in the South Ameri- 
can states, the war of the Roses, or the 
war of the Spanish Succession. There is all 
the difference between them that there is 
between the man who fights in defence of 
life and liberty, and the brutes who fight 
for plunder. The United States, England, 
France, and Germany owe something to 
civilization and religion, and they should 
interfere in this great loss of life and treas- 
ure, and forcibly arbitrate such childish 
quarrels. They are a disgrace to history. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 31 

We are nothing more than spectators at a 
prize-fight." 

The Contributor. — "Exactly, spectators, 
referees, judges, and best of all, purse- 
holders. As for me, I have a gallery seat 
and my eyesight is poor ; but the sound of 
the blows makes my old blood tingle." 

The Reader. — "It ought to be a good 
war, — morally good, — high-toned and civil- 
ized, as Christian nations have armed and 
drilled both sides, and Christian nations 
hope to progress in the art of war by the 
object lessons in the efficiency and deficiency 
of our modern pneumatic guns, smokeless 
powder, and naval coats-of-mail ! " 

The Contributor. — " The worst, the most 
sanguine, the seemingly most uncalled-for 
wars that ever disgraced the annals of his- 
tory, have in the end proved a blessing to 
mankind. The first French Revolution, in 
which was shed enough innocent blood to 
float the Oregon^ startled Europe, intellect- 
ually as well as politically, from the sepul- 



32 As Talked in the Sanctum 

chral repose of the last century ; it shook 
the old continent to its centre, impregnated 
the entire social system with new elements, 
both of good and evil, woke it up, and set 
inquiring minds to work to an extent before 
unknown. The Napoleonic wars, unjusti- 
fied and unprincipled, overthrew the feudal 
system, tore down oligarchy, the divine 
right of kings, and made republicanism 
possible in Europe — " 

" I confess," interrupted the Parson, smil- 
ing blandly, " that like the Thessalonians I 
am ' shaken and troubled in mind.' " 

There is no use in trying to carry a spon- 
taneous conversation to a logical conclusion. 
The mere effort would sap all the spon- 
taneity out of it in a moment. There is no 
originality of brilliancy in the word " chest- 
nuts ! " but it is expressive, even among 
savants, and will bring a haranguer — like 
the Contributor, for example — off his 
winged horse in an instant. Our talks were 



As Talked in the Sanctum 33 

never serious for more than a moment at 
a time ; not long enough for any one of us 
to ride a hobby. We were all too indifferent 
to one another's opinions. Had we been 
called together to growl at and reform 
politics, law, art, or literature, had we been 
called together at a certain time and for a 
set purpose, no one would have thought of 
saying " chestnuts ! " or of strolling out of 
the room at a most critical moment. 

For one I do not believe in clubs, — that 
is, mutual improvement clubs. Debating 
societies for boys are a most useful adjunct 
to a school, and a vast benefit to the de- 
baters ; but Thursday or Friday or Satur- 
day evening clubs for the study of Browning 
or Guy Fawkes are, beyond the " refresh- 
ments " and the social part, absurd. Simply 
because the hour of 8 p.m. is set for the 
worship of Tolstoi and his works, is no 
reason why we should be in perfect unison 
with the subject. At that particular hour I 
may feel more like being at the Tivoli, or 



34 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

you may be pining for an airing on the 
front of a cable car. I do not believe that 
any great good ever came of ten men and 
twenty women listening for an hour to 
an essay on the " Whichness-of-the-Here," 
when any one of the number could derive 
twice the benefit from reading Emerson on 
the same subject in the quietude of his own 
study, when the spirit moved him. There 
is no spontaneity, no originality, no laugh- 
ter, nothing but yawns and a sense of duty. 

The Artist pulled down the shade, and — 

The Office Boy. — " Proof ! " 



IV 

THE wish takes possession of me, and 
I step into Moore's old book-store 
for a look around, and a chat with the 
cheery little man who is responsible for its 
existence. It is just above the sign of " Zum 
Rathskeller,*' up a narrow flight of steps, 
almost impassible because of a pot-pourri of 
coverless books and dust-stained copies of 
magazines, — the one I am making now will 
find its way there, I fear, — bargains at five 
cents to catch the eye, along with the blue 
and green Deutschmen who are condemned 
to forever quaff beer on the afore-mentioned 
sign. There's something pathetic in the 
array, for all they so bravely flaunt their 
loveless old age in the sun and fog of Cali- 
fornia Street. A dozen things occur to me 
that I might say, right here; comparisons I 
35 



36 As Talked in the Sanctum 

might draw ; morals I might point. But 
what I started to say was something entirely- 
different. 

Usually I hate to pick up a copy of 
a well-known author, and find every pat 
expression or happy thought marked, — 
a covert insult to any one who may read. 
Half of such markings have no more indi- 
viduality than the Milky Way. The fool 
that emphasized the good things in "The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " might as 
well have drawn his lead pencil from top to 
bottom on every page and from start to fin- 
ish. In fact, he did, nearly. I put it down 
to pure affectation on the quondam owner's 
part, and make the deduction that his taste 
or weakness for books had overtaken him 
in middle life, and that he wished to demon- 
strate to some one that he knew a good thing 
when he saw it. I only trust he succeeded. 
I do not mean to go on record as a railer at 
markers in books. I remember turning the 
pages of " Middlemarch," long after my 



As Talked in the Sanctum yj 

father's death, and reading his thoiignts at 
the time in a dozen faint pencillings about 
significant passages ; and it took no Sher- 
lock Holmes to detect the vocation of the 
reader of the copy of " Les Miserables " I 
held in my hand, in some corrections of 
typographical errors in the letter-press, — 
w.f/s, l.c.'s, etc., — on its margin. 

Then possibly I am doubly charitable, 
as I have a weakness of my own, one I am 
conscious of, — a mild mania for original 
editions, rare books, and curiosities gener- 
ally in literature, — and I am proud to con- 
fess that I have ruined the books of my 
inherited library by odd old volumes bound 
in paper and parchment, lucky if bound at 
all. I am sure sundry stately works in 
vellum and calf must be scandalized in 
being ranged by the side of their indi- 
gent brethren. I never, however, attained 
the proud distinction of actually owning a 
Mazarin Bible, although I secured original 
editions of most of the American authors. 



38 As Talked in the Sanctum 

This is the history of a deduction that at 
the time I thought rather clever. I com- 
piled it while Mr. Moore was expatiating 
on the beauty of a genuine Angelo to a 
young fencer who was just learning the 
difference between a thrust and a parry. 
The book I found was a not rare copy 
of Emerson's " Letters and Social Aims." 
The name of its once owner was " John 
Doudet." 

John Doudetj I said, is a compound of 
two nationalities. Doudet is French, John, 
Saxon. The father or grandfather was, not 
unlikely, the younger son of some great 
French house, who fled to America, to win 
a fortune and then return. But he met a 
fair American, who was dearer to him than 
his French blood. 

John was their son, — eldest, perhaps. 
The young wife named him " John,'* after 
her father. Then John was proud, — his 
name was on several pages of the book, — 
proud of his French blood and lineage. He 



As Talked in the Sanctum 39 

had been well educated, was a thinker, else 
why would he read Emerson so thoroughly ? 
He had read it thoroughly ; it was intelli- 
gently marked throughout. He was a man 
of culture and self-control, always self-pos- 
sessed, for on the seventy-second page he 
had marked : — 

" The staple figure In novels is the man 
of aplomb " ; then he underlined, "Napo- 
leon is the type of this class in modern 
history." Then again, " Keep cool and 
you command everybody." He was a gen- 
tleman in dress and manners. He believed 
in the outward signs. On page 79 I saw 
marked, " The sense of being perfectly well- 
dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity 
religion is powerless to bestow." Again, I 
see he is not rich, neither is he poor. He 
philosophizes in the passage, " Every man 
must seek to secure his independence, but 
need not be rich." Possibly this is the rea- 
son he did not return to France and claim 
his ancestral rights ; his pride held back. 



40 As Talked in the Sanctum 

He is something of a cynic, I discover, 
by the underlining of: " In a large sense, 
one would say there is no originality. All 
minds quote." Then again, under the sen- 
tence, " Take as a type the boundless free- 
dom here in Massachusetts," he has written 
in a small, elegant chirography : " See the 
history of witchcraft in this same Massa- 
chusetts." 

He is neither a braggart nor a fop, I con- 
clude, from the marked passage in the essay 
on Greatness, "A sensible man does not 
brag, avoids introducing the names of his 
creditable companions, omits himself as 
habitually as another man obtrudes himself 
in the discourse, and is content with putting 
fact or theme simply on its ground." I liked 
him all the better for this. I began to feel 
that I knew him. In my mind's eye I had 
reconstructed his character as satisfactorily as 
you might reconstruct a mastodon from one 
of its hairs. His physical make-up I will 
not try to lay down, but I should like to 



As Talked in the Sanctmn 41 

know whether John Doudet ever returned 
to the home of his fathers and claimed his 
ancestral halls. I did not buy the book. 
You can find it any day on the third shelf 
to the left, as you go in. There are so many 
books in this world that one must think 
twice before he buys an extra one, especially 
one who has to read and review ^vt, ten, 
fifteen, even twenty new ones a month. 

This reviewing a new book is a curious 
thing. 

I suppose we review books because we 
imagine that our readers enjoy reading our 
opinions of them ; and yet I do not believe 
any one is ever guided in their choice of 
reading matter by the reviews that we so 
carefully, and ofttimes so laboriously, write 
down. I know I never read a review of a 
new novel until after I have read the novel, 
and made up my mind as to its merits and 
demerits. It is then interesting to compare 
opinions, or discover side lights on dark pas- 
sages that I did not think worth exploring. 



42 As Talked in the Sanctum 

When " Trilby " came out, I realized by 
the number of reviews that filled all manner 
and degrees of journals, that it was a book 
far above the average ; but I did not seri- 
ously read one of them until after I had 
read the book and inditeld my own review. 
It is a fact worthy of note, when you pause 
to consider it, that a reviewer never thinks 
it worth while to call particular attention 
to a new novel until after it has actually 
appeared between covers. 

" Trilby " first saw the light in a New 
York magazine. If I remember correctly, 
there was an interval between its close as a 
serial and its reappearance as a bona fide book. 
I will venture the assertion that the propor- 
tion of reviews of it in its first and last form 
were as one to one hundred. No, the truth 
of the matter is that we feel we must review a 
book that is sent us, simply because it is sent 
us. There are books whose very publishers 
realize they are hardly worth a serious read- 
ing, and who, in order to obtain the dignity 



As Talked in the Sanctum 43 

of a review, send ready-made reviews wiih 
the request that they be copied. 

Such books should never be published. 
I do not recollect ever finding a ready-made 
review that was condemnatory, neither do I 
recollect ever finding a ready-made review in 
a high-class book. 

The Contributor, — " Now that the election 
is over and the tariff bugbear disposed of, 
I want to know if this country is going to 
have time, between now and next election, 
to straighten out our disgraceful foreign 
relations ? " 

The Parson. — "Do you refer to the 
wholesale massacre of the Armenians ? If 
so, I trust our government will make His 
Turkish Majesty understand that this coun- 
try protects her subjects and upholds her 
treaties as jealously in the heart of Armenia 
as in the streets of Constantinople." 

The Contributor, — " That is all very well 
for the text of a missionary sermon, but how 
can we even expect our flag to be respected 



44 ^^ Talked in the Sancttim 

in the Eastern Hemisphere, when our child- 
ish internal bickerings cause us to neglect 
the enforcement of our rights and self- 
assumed prerogatives in the Western ? " 
The Reader. — " The Monroe Doctrine ? " 
The Contributor, — " The same. Is it 
innocuous or not ? It holds that the United 
States cannot tolerate European encroach- 
ment upon the soil of the American Re- 
publics. It — ** 

Here the Office Boy entered with the East- 
ern mail. There were a dozen postal cards, 
asking for sample copies, and holding out the 
never-to-be realized insinuation that, " If 
the magazine pleases me, I may decide to 
take it." We advertise to furnish " sample 
copies " for ten cents. They cost fifteen 
cents each, but the loss is not great. Where 
one encloses ten cents, twenty -five remit their 
autograph on a postal. Along about Christ- 
mas the number of literary beggars trebles, 
and the strange thing about this sponging 
system is, the Manager informs us, that 



As Talked in the Sanctum 45 

Georgia and Arkansas are the banner States 
in the sample copy campaign, and tail the 
list on the subscription books. 

Sample copies don't pay. The Manager, 
who has been a miner on the coast when 
mines paid, can prove his axiom. He once 
wrote a mining story from his own life. It 
was called " The Temblor in the Mad Mule 
Mine." He had an eye to business, and 
openly boasted that it would sell five thou- 
sand copies in Shasta County alone. To let 
his old pards of the "Mad Mule Mine" 
know that the account of the famous tem- 
blor had been made historic, he mailed a 
sample copy to a leading citizen of Shasta. 
A year went by and the extra ^y^ thousand 
copies were still unordered. One day the 
Manager met the recipient of the " Sample 
Copy " on Mission Street. " Fred," shouted 
the old man, " you did us proud. Do you 
know that air story of the ' tremelor ' travelled 
all over three counties, and when it got back 
it was worn down to seven sheets. That's 



46 As Talked in the Sanctum 

the kind of literature that makes magazines 
rich. Keep it up, old Pard, keep it up." 
And the Manager acknowledged the subtle 
flattery as became a successful author. They 
drank to the temblor, to the magazine, to 
Bret Harte, and to the five thousand copies 
that were patiently awaiting the realization 
of the Manager's fond dream. 

The Contributor switched off again on 
one of his favorite themes as I extracted a 
big, fat, healthy poem on " The Golden 
Gate at Sunset" from a rather delicate and 
careworn envelope. 

" Seventy years ago," he began, " when 
the Monroe Doctrine first became the boast 
of the Republic — " 

But again the Sanctum door swung open. 

The Office Boy. — " Proof! " 



1WENT to hear the Parson last Sun- 
day. His sermon was good. By that 
I mean that it was entertaining. He gave 
me some fresh ideas, ideas that never origi- 
nated in the Sanctum, and made me remem- 
ber that I had a higher duty to perform for 
my fellow-men than to edit a magazine. 

I believe it does one good to go to church, 
even if your mind does wander at times 
during the sermon — no matter how excel- 
lent it is. My grandfather was an earnest 
Christian and never, to my knowledge, 
missed a service on Sunday ; and yet one 
of my earliest recollections is the row of 
spots along the wall of the simple edifice 
in which he worshipped for seventy years, 
where his head, and the heads of his dear 
old neighbors, rested peacefully in slumber 

47 



48 As Talked in the Sanctum 

during the two hours exposition of the text, 
" Hell from beneath is moved for thee to 
meet thee at thy coming " (Isaiah xiv, 9). 
I do not think hell from beneath was moved 
to meet him simply because he slept. He 
slept reverently ; for he had become wearied 
in doing good all the week. 

I am sure I might better have been 
asleep during the Parson's discourse, than 
to have had my mind slipping away on all 
imaginable errands — sacred and profane. 
Some passage strikingly beautiful would 
rivet my attention for a moment, and then, 
before I knew it, I would recollect that I 
was carrying a letter in my very inside 
pocket that I had promised the Mistress to 
mail the day before. The thought would 
carry me to the letter's destination, and for 
ten minutes I would take part in a spirited 
conversation with the little family circle in 
the New England town where my grand- 
father slumbered through so many Sunday 
sermons. Then the scenery of a Sunday 



As Talked in the Sanctum 49 

morning would all come back to me, and 
the Parson, the stained glass tombstone, 
the groined arches, would fade away. 

We used always to lie abed at grand- 
father's on Sunday morning. On week- 
days, we usually arose at six, and how good 
that extra Sunday hour in bed seemed. The 
memory of it now is so filled with a sense 
of luxuriousness that it seems almost sinful. 
Grandmother never failed to shake her head 
gravely, with a look in her eyes that half 
reproved and wholly forgave our childish 
indulgence, and she never failed to say, as 
the last tousled head appeared from the 
twisting oak stairway, "Yet a little sleep, 
a little slumber, a little folding of the hands 
to sleep ; " but it was said so sweetly that 
it left no sting, and was almost an invitation 
to return to the great downy bed upstairs. 
But just as I had entered upon a Sunday 
morning way back in my earliest childhood, 
I heard the Parson say, as though in com- 
mentary upon my very thoughts, "The 



50 As Talked in the Sanctum 

path of the just is as the shining light, that 
shineth more and more unto the perfect 
day/' and I congratulated myself that even if 
my thoughts had strayed from the text, they 
were following in " the path of the just." 

Grandfather shaved himself carefully every 
Sunday morning. It was a momentous un- 
dertaking, and we would watch him strop 
his razor on the leather-bound family Bible, 
with an interest that bordered on awe. 

The Contributor. — "It is something to 
be able to boast of a grandfather who owned 
a family Bible. There is no disputing that 
grandfathers, family Bibles, and blue blood, 
hunt in trios." 

While grandfather was shaving, wc tip- 
toed about the room as though his life were 
in danger, and I verily believe it was. The 
blue and green kittens that forever played 
with a yellow ball on the face of the great 
clock above the brick fireplace seemed to 
open their solferino eyes as grandfather lost 
his identity in a vast Niagara of lather. 



As Talked in the Sancfmn 51 

The Parson. — "I do not resent the day- 
dreams of my parishioners, if they are as 
innocent as the last speaker's. I am not 
conceited, and I do not hope to hold each 
and every one's mind in my grasp as I ser- 
monize. If I can turn their thoughts into 
a pleasant channel, away from business and 
dress, for thirty minutes once a week, I am 
content. Every man has an inner conscious- 
ness, in which is stored a vast melange of 
things — bits of sunshine, snatches of song, 
forgotten smiles, half-remembered kind- 
nesses, childhood recollections, and baby- 
ish sweets that he is ashamed to summon 
up in the glare of the sun and the flare of 
a work-a-day life. For six days you are 
hammered and knocked by the world and 
yourself; on the seventh, I want you to 
open your soul and let its hidden incense 
and honey out. The Editor may return to 
the Sundays of his childhood and the ' golden 
texts ' of his first Sunday-school ; the Con- 
tributor to a sweetheart in the long ago, 



52 As Talked in the Sanctum 

and a first kiss that has kept his lips pure 
ever since. You see I don't expect a great 
deal. I preach for myself as much as for 
you. If I can start the divine milk of 
human kindness, or cause an inward tear to 
flow, my sermon is more than a success. 
* For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk 
the milk of Paradise.' " 

The Artist. — " Bravo ! Had the Parson 
preached like this, the Editor's mind would 
not have wandered." 

The Parson. — " One of my first sermons 
was delivered in the pulpit of an eminent 
divine. As the congregation filed in and 
saw a stripling in the place of the great man 
they had learned to reverence, they tiptoed 
out again one after another. In my right- 
eous wrath I rose and announced that there 
would be an intermission of five minutes, 
during which all those who had come to 
worship Doctor Chapin might withdraw, 
after which all those who had come to wor- 
ship the Lord would unite with me in sing- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 53 

ing the twenty-third hymn. I thought the 
retort very smart at the time ; but I have 
since learned that, perchance, I was a wasp in 
the ears of the good old Christians, and that 
my buzzing kept them from their Sunday 
meditation. It is the old familiar face and 
voice in the pulpit that bring out the best 
in the listener, not the gymnastics of the 
actor or the eloquence of the revivalist. If 
I suggest a train of thought that makes you 
better, it is as much as Demosthenes or 
Cicero ever accomplished. ' Wisdom is the 
principal thing ; therefore get wisdom ; and 
with all thy getting get understanding.' " 

There is an atmosphere about some 
churches that is filled with reverence. Oft- 
times it is owing to the preacher, sometimes 
to the architecture, but more often, I think, 
it is because of associations. If for forty 
years or five hundred years a church has 
been blessed with a congregation that fills 
its spaces for but one purpose, — the wor- 
ship of the Creator, — I believe it builds up 



54 ^s Talked iit the Sanctum 

an atmosphere that fairly throbs with their 
prayers ; the air is magnetic, charged with 
so subtle a current that the stranger feels it 
without understanding. 

The cathedral at Cologne gave me that 
impression, while Westminster Abbey did 
not. Notre Dame was so saturated with 
history and romance that I forgot that I was 
in a church, while the half-ruined Mosque 
of Hassan, at Cairo, impressed me, in spite 
of the fact that it was raised to the glory of 
a false Prophet, as a home of God. I am 
not half as reverent in the Parson's big 
church, with its costly windows and great 
organ, as in the small pine church of my 
grandfather. The Parson's steeple is two 
hundred or three hundred feet high and 
holds a chime of bells, but the smoke from 
the city hides the steeple, and the clang of 
the cable cars drowns the music of the 
chimes. 

As grandfather finished shaving, and while 
grandmother was arranging his stock for the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 55 

fifth time, the long sweet note from the bell 
in the seventy-foot steeple three miles away 
came sounding through the soft, pulseless 
air. It was the " first bell," — ten o'clock. 
The scent of the hay and of growing things 
came into the half-open window. The air 
was sleepily warm, and so still that the 
urchins on the back seats could hear every 
fretful movement of the staid old horses in 
the long row of sheds that bounded the 
small churchyard on one side. The pulpit 
was five steps above the congregation, far 
enough to transform the white-haired old 
preacher, who was our companion and ad- 
viser on weeks days, into a priest and a 
master. We were in God's house ; we felt 
it, and whether the discourse was on heaven 
or hell, it was accepted with a cheerful 
thankfulness and a reverence befitting the 
place. 

There is something in reverence that, with 
a little fanning, bursts into blind obedience 
and unreasoning patriotism. In the solemn 



56 As Talked in the Sanctum 

hush that preceded the benediction, when 
every head was bowed, every heart throbbing 
in unison, every mind filled with the same 
thought, a flood of reverence, too deep to 
hide, passed over the congregation, and a 
tear stood in more than one eye. God, for 
the moment, was very near. 

The Contributor, — "I sometimes think, 
after all has been said, that an autocratic 
monarchy is the only really sensible govern- 
ment. This system of government has its 
drawbacks, especially when the power of 
spending money and declaring war is vested 
in the hands of four hundred Congressmen, 
every one of whom has a different mind and 
is responsible to his constituents. A king, 
if he were not an imbecile, and imbeciles on 
the thrones of the world are not good form 
in this century, would see at a glance that 
the building of the Nicaragua Canal was a 
matter of vital importance to the commerce 
of the United States, and he would order it 



As Talked in the Sanctum 57 

built. But the project was smothered in the 
last Congress, because one member thought 
the money could be better spent in river 
improvements on Willow Creek — his dis- 
trict. And another thought that Shoreditch 
had got to the point where the government 
must build it a new post-office, if it expected 
his vote on any bills that were for the bene- 
fit of the great body politic. So-called high- 
toned ' independent * newspapers egg on 
Congressmen to oppose the building of bat- 
tle-ships, because it is a decade of peace, and 
no doubt, because Wall Street needs the 
money. If a foreign war-ship should sail 
into New York harbor and drop a bomb 
into the midst of the big cylinder press that 
prints one such newspaper, I think, if able 
to ever get out another issue, it would see 
the need of more war-ships. This country is 
rich, in spite of its everlasting talk about lack 
of funds and treasury deficit. We pay our 
President, cabinet ministers, diplomats, mere 
pittances compared to fourth- and fifth-class 



58 As Talked in the Sanctum 

European powers. We have no court to 
support nor any royal loafers ; we do not even 
pay our just claims, — adjudged to be just by 
the Court of Claims, — then why should we 
not use public moneys for public needs ? 

" Since when has the world become so 
good that war-ships and armies have become 
unnecessary ? It is exasperating to elect a 
good, sensible neighbor to go to Washington, 
only to have him spend his time building 
up and tumbling down tariffs, wasting wind 
on bond issues, and haggling over contested 
election cases/' 

The Reader, — '' ! ! " 

The Contributor, — " There ! don't inter- 
rupt me. The ' Cuckoo Congress ' is dead, 
and I, as an American citizen, intend to have 
my say. It is a matter of indifference to me 
what its politics was. It is what it did and 
what it promised to do and what it didn't do 
that interests me. Where is the free trade 
tariff it promised? How many of the trusts 
that it swore to suppress have felt its blight- 



As Talked m the Sanctum 59 

ing breath? What has become of the boasted 
repeal of the prohibitory tax on State bank- 
notes? Has it irrigated the arid lands, or 
built the Nicaragua Canal, or laid a cable to 
Hawaii ? '* 

The Contributor's impassioned note 
brought the Office Boy to the door with 
a look of genuine alarm on his face. " But 
they are gone, the cuckoos, thank God ! " 

The Office Boy, — " Yes, sir, they sailed for 
Australia on the Mariposa, Thursday." 

The Contributor, — " They what ? Whom 
do you mean ? '* 

The Office 5<?>'. — "Why! the 'Gaiety 
Girls,' sir." 

Then the good Contributor blushed to 
the top of his dear old head. The Con- 
tributor, who never went to the theatre 
unless Shakspere was before the footlights, 
had gone three nights to sec the " Gaiety 
Girls" at the Baldwin, and mere curiosity, 
no doubt, had taken him to the Oceanic 
dock to see them sail out of the ever mys- 



6o ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

terious portals of the Golden Gate. The 
Artist laughed softly, and the Editor went 
out into the adjoining room to listen to the 
story of a "poetess of passion/* who brought 
a letter of introduction from Joaquin Miller. 

But when he returned to the Sanctum — 

The Office Boy, — " Proof! " 



VI 

" T AM sixty-four to-day, boys," said the 
A Parson. Then he so drew himself up 
that there was but the faintest suspicion of 
a stoop in his broad shoulders and awaited 
our congratulations. The crown of his hat 
just cleared the lintel of the Sanctum door. 
Strength and bodily confidence pervaded 
his person, and the flush of health and 
exercise glowed in his clean-shaven face. 
His hair was white, but his eye was as 
bright and alert as a schoolboy's. Not 
until he gave the military salute did we 
recollect the ugly sabre cut concealed be- 
neath his immaculate shirt-bosom. We 
always referred to it as the Sanctum's 
"V. C." The Parson, however, was 
prouder of the fact that his four years at 
the front had, in his own estimation, left 

6i 



62 As Talked in the Sanctum 

no cause for him to call for a pension, than 
that he had brought this glory to the Sanc- 
tum. There was a grain of vanity in the 
good man's consciousness of perfect health 
and unimpaired vitality that we were secretly 
proud of, although the Contributor never 
failed to remark solicitously, on occasion : 
" I wish you could have seen the Parson 
in such and such a year. Healthy ! you 
wouldn't know he was the same man." 

Then we would all look sympathetically 
toward the " invalid " and mourn that we 
could not have known him in his prime. 

The Parson was a sturdy shepherd, both 
mentally and physically, and had it ever 
come to the point of holding his aristo- 
cratic flock together by sheer force of 
muscle, he would have been equal to the 
trial. It would have been a strong sheep 
indeed that could twist itself out of his 
powerful hands. 

The Parson believes that no man is so 
busy or driven that he cannot aflford an 



As Talked in the Sanctum 63 

hour a day to physical drill ; that much time 
given to Indian clubs, dumb-bells, or to his 
own hobby — fencing — is, he declares, in* 
vested at compound interest. It had not 
taken him long to convert the Sanctum and 
turn it into a fencing class ; but upon the 
outside world, even those of his own flock, 
he had not made the least impression. I 
have heard him preach and lecture again 
and again on the Gospel of Exercise, only 
to have his pleased audience agree with him 
from first to last, without a thought of even 
giving his method a trial. We had only 
to mention that the Parson was looking 
well to start him off on this well-built 
hobby. 

The Parson. — " Looking well, am I ? I 
am sixty-four to-day, remember, and I sleep 
and eat like a baby. I can chase a street 
car two blocks without losing my breath, 
and tramp from here to Menlo and back 
without an effort; or I can work in my 
study, if necessary, from six in the morning 



64 -^s Talked in the Sanctum 

until twelve at night, and not feel it. Do 
you know why ?. Because I devote one 
hour of every day of my life, save Sunday, 
to good hard exercise. I bring every 
muscle of my body and brain into action 
and, for the time being, I forget my trials, 
my business, my work, in a grand salle 
(Tarmes. During that hour I had rather 
louche Professor Ansot than pen the best 
sermon ever written. Or, if it is a lesson 
instead of a bout, I am prouder of my self- 
control as I stand before the dancing point 
of his foil than I am of the biggest marriage 
fee that I ever received. And then to stop 
before you are tired, dripping with perspira- 
tion, the blood bounding through your 
body, your muscles all quivering with excite- 
ment, and go out into the street with head 
up and shoulders thrown back, ah ! it is 
glorious. Tell me, cannot you do better 
work in the office or in the study after 
that ? Look around among our friends : 
hollow chests and stooping shoulders greet 



As Talked in the Sanctum 65 

you everywhere. In the spring, this one 
must have a tonic ; in the fall, that one 
must go to the country for rest. The one 
spends more money for medicine than I 
do for fencing lessons, and the other more 
time in his one trip than I do with my 
hour a day the year round. What is the 
result on their part ? Nothing. Why, 
four years ago the Editor had the grip ; he 
took a sea voyage and a hogshead of 
medicine. The grip went away for that 
summer, but returned the next winter. 
You all said he was going into a decline. 
I am not preaching, but you know the 
result. I got him down to Ansot*s and 
started him in fencing, an hour a day. The 
grip fled. Look at him now! He can 
do two men's work. His two years' 
fencing has made a man of him, although 
I confess he hasn't become much of a 
fencer." 

I bowed, and threw my gloves at the rev- 
erend man's patent leathers. 



66 ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

The F arson, — "This generation is brought 
up wrong. No attention is paid to health. 
It has flaccid muscles and weak lungs. The 
American father imagines that the Indian 
club belongs to the specialty man on the 
variety stage and the fencing foil to the 
pages of Dumas's novels. Consequently 
the American boy is sent to school to 
develop his brain and abuse his body. He 
studies trigonometry for discipline without 
knowing that there is more disciphne in a 
parry and three times as much mathematics 
in a touche. The English know better. 
They walk and ride and exercise conscien- 
tiously, and they do not have the dyspepsia 
or insomnia. When I advise a business 
friend to take an hour a day for exercise, he 
replies, ' I wish I could, but I haven't time.' 
Hasn't time ! Mark my word, that man 
will be old at forty, wear out at fifty, and die 
at fifty-five. The ten or fifteen years that 
he will spend in his grave before I shall join 
him would have been plenty of time. Look 



As Talked in the Sanctum 67 

at the patent medicines in our stores. What 
country on earth has so many ? Of them 
all, which ones have we inherited from 
Greece or Rome or even France ? Do you 
think that there would be any sale for these 
concoctions of iron and cod-liver oil if it 
were fashionable for our young ladies and 
gentlemen to walk and ride and fence ? Bah ! 
Not one per cent of them have strength 
enough to pick themselves up if they fall 
down, and none of them know the pleasure 
of being able to enjoy the good things of the 
world." 

The Reader, — " Not even the Parson^s 
sermons." 

The Parson, — " Why, when I was abroad 

The Office Boy, — " There is a lady out- 
side who wishes to know if you can use a 
poem on the California Poppy ? " 

The Reader, — "Tell the lady that the 
demand for poems on the California Poppy 
and Mount Shasta is weak to-day. We are 



68 As Talked hi the Sanctum 

running the Yosemite and the Golden Gate 
for a change." 

The Parson, — " You may smile at my 
five weeks abroad, but it was a vigorous trip. 
I started with a party of thirty and by the 
time we arrived at the base of the Pyramids 
there were only nine left. We had tired out 
the weakhngs. My physical training stood 
me in good stead. Three of the nine 
attempted the Great Pyramid, but only two of 
us succeeded. Do you not think that I was 
paid for my hour every morning by the 
view I got at its top and the proud conscious- 
ness I had won where so many others had 
failed ? There are many men, — yes, and 
women, — who claim that they have scaled 
the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Collectively, 
I admire them, particularly the women ; 
individually, all but the athletes like myself 
must pardon me if I am politely sceptical. 
The ledges that I walked along between my 
Bedouins, the blocks of granite the height of 
man that I was dragged up over, and the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 69 

corners and crevices I edged into, would put 
the walls of one of our canons to shame. 
But the reward ! I had v/aited until I was 
sixty, but it was mine at last. The Pyra- 
mids ; the Sphinx, ' staring right on, with 
calm eternal eye ' ; Heliopolis, the city of the 
sun, — the On of Genesis; Cairo with its 
thousand domes and minarets ; the sacred 
Nile ; the red desert of Libya, where there 
is no shade save what the chameleon casts ; 
the tombs of the Mamelukes ; the Island of 
Roda, where the great lav/giver was found, 
— lay stretched below me like the panoramic 
map of the Sunday-school room of my child- 
hood. Away to the right was Goshen, the 
land to which the silver-haired patriarch 
Jacob and his sons came ; farther, Ur of the 
Chaldees, from out of which Abraham 
journeyed in the time of famine ; to the 
south were Ghizeh and Memphis, only a 
mass of scattered ruins to tell of their former 
greatness." 

The Artist, — " Very pretty ! Accept my 



yo As Talked in the Sanctum 

humble congratulations and wishes for many 

happy returns of this day." 

The Poet. — " And from me, — 

* A green old age, unconscious of decays 
That proves the hero born in better days.* ** 

The Occasional Visitor. — "I shall take up 
fencing at once, if it will enable me to ascend 
the Great Pyramid when I am sixty, and have 
breath 'enough left to see anything but a 
dizzy whirl before my eyes." 

Then we fell to talking about fencing as 
an art, not strictly as a means of exercise. 
It is rather a remarkable thing that the theory 
of fencing has reached all but absolute per- 
fection at this day, when the art has become 
practically useless. Had D'Artagnan known 
how to use his rapier as do Ansot of San 
Francisco or Senac of New York, he would 
have had less difficulty with the bravos of 
the court. In fact, Dumas, Ainsworth, Sir 
Walter Scott and Stanley Weyman, in order 
that their heroes may be victors on all occa- 
sions, make them masters of the modern 



I 



As Talked in the Sanctum 71 

fencing school, — an anachronism as absurd 
as it is foolish ! The duel of the days of 
" Ivanhoe " and " The Three Musketeers " 
was a question more of brute strength and 
agility than of skill or science. The duel 
with rapiers in the sixteenth and early seven- 
teenth centuries was far from the graceful, 
picturesque performance that authors and 
artists would have us believe. The charm- 
ing sword-play that one usually sees in 
Hamlet is innocently ridiculous. It was 
learned by the modern actor of the fencing 
master of his day, and adapted to a play that 
was supposed to describe a Danish court in 
the Middle Ages. Hamlet might as well be 
in full evening dress and patent-leathers as 
to salute Laertes with the lunge, reversing of 
the point, saluting in carte and tierce, etc. 
Such fencing was not even perfected fifty 
years ago. The principles which are the A 
B C of sword-play to-day were absolutely 
unknown in the days of duelling and would 
have established the reputation of the courtier 



72 As Talked in the Sanctum 

in the time of Louis XV. The history of 
the sword is a history of the evolution of 
man. The rough, unskilful fighting of the 
Middle Ages, which has been so wrongfully 
idealized by author and artist, was wholly in 
keeping with the reign of brute force in 
social life as well as politics. The mighty 
arm and the mighty weapon went together, 
although the weakling of to-day could have 
silenced both. The mace or glaive and armor 
played an equal part with the sword, and the 
strongest won. With the Renaissance came 
the wild, frantic, and vicious reign of the 
rapier. Armor was laid aside and the cava- 
lier strove to outwit his antagonist instead of 
beating him down. There were no parriers 
or thrusts, only a mad whirl and exhibition 
of agiUty. The sword-play corresponded to 
the manner and literature of the time — it 
lacked balance. With the introduction of 
fire-arms, the sword lost its importance and 
became an article of dress, and its use an 
accomplishment like dancing. Not till then 



As Talked in the Sajtctum 73 

did the swordsman discover that the sword 
became really dangerous only when handled 
with the least expenditure of strength and 
managed almost entirely by the wrist. Duel- 
ling is a thing of the past, and fencing is 
simply a pastime that combines the greatest 
amount of mental excitement with bodily 
exercise. It is unfortunate that the use of 
the foil became obsolete when duelling 
became a crime. It can be made a game of 
skill that delights the brain as well as tasks 
the muscles. 

The Office Boy, — ''"ProoVr 



VII 

^Y^HE CONTRIBUTOR. — '' Did you 
-/ ever feel that you had an inspiration 
to write ? Possibly not the divine inspira- 
tion of the heaven-born genius encouraged 
by a brain full of great live thoughts, but 
the lazy, irritating itching to lay aside the 
book you are reading and write — not to 
write anything in particular, but just write, 
compose. Mine — for I am a victim — gen- 
erally exhausts itself, I admit, while I am 
sharpening one end of my pencil or chew- 
ing the other into a brush-Uke pulp ; but 
still I am unable to resist this sudden, 
delightful call." 

The Reader remarked that he had heard 
the still, small voice often, but that it gen- 
erally reached him from the composing 
rooms via the Office Boy. 

74 



^s Talked in the Sanctum 75 

The Contributor. — " When I was a boy 
and first heard an orchestra, I would sit 
through number after number with eyes 
half closed and thoughts spanning the uni- 
verse. I had no idea what was being played ; 
the airs did not particularly interest me. But 
one would drive my ambitions in one direc- 
tion and one in another. Sometimes, with 
the music, I pictured myself behind the 
footlights — an orator — holding spellbound 
the audience, of which, so I dreamed, I 
was one, moving them to tears or laughter 
by the power of my eloquence. Sentences 
of my mythical speech would flash through 
my brain. My breath would come quickly, 
for as I would finish this matchless oration 
that was to make my name honored for all 
time I saw the audience rising as one man 
and cheering until the whole earth echoed 
with the shouts. The orchestra would cease 
and I would descend from Olympus, a little 
sheepish withal, but with my pulses beating 
like trip-hammers and my eyes all aglow. 



76 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Music fired a thousand latent, unknown, 
unformulated ambitions. They were big, 
warm, and generous. I fairly ached to be 
up and doing. I could not wait for the 
years of my adolescence to pass. When I 
arrived at man's estate the horizon narrowed 
suddenly. Instead of conquering the world 
and moving multitudes, I found that there 
v/ere certain stubborn elementary facts that 
must be dealt with before I could ever make 
my name known and honored, even in my 
own city. Then music lost its power. It 
was of no use to picture myself a general 
before I knew even the ordinary drill of a 
common soldier ; or the editor of a great 
magazine, when my contributions were not 
acceptable in the humblest newspaper offices. 
" I never became an orator. Still, those 
early air-castles survived houses that should 
have been built of firmer material, and drove 
the dreamer to the conquering of tasks that 
would have been considered menial a few 
years before. This is what I mean by my 



As Talked in the Sanctum 77 

sudden ambitions or inspirations to write. 
To-day, for example, I was reading Lafcadio 
Hearn*s charming studies and essays of 
Japan, ' Out of the East/ The beauty of 
the language, the delicacy of the descriptions, 
the almost breathing perfume of the scenes, 
moved me strangely, — not to take the next 
steamer for Japan and join the author in his 
paradise, for I know too well the folly of 
anticipation and the disappointment of reali- 
zation ; but to imitate, or rival, the writer 
with my pen. I wrote at my novel for an 
hour. Hearn was the inspiration, and it is 
to him that I owe this chapter. I plagiarized 
his spirit, not his ideas or his words. I think 
he would recognize it. There are other 
authors that are responsible for the atmos- 
phere of other paragraphs and chapters, — 
Stanley Weyman, Ian Maclaren, Doyle, — 
and, myself! 

" This is a confession that I do not wish 
to go outside the Sanctum, but I have been 
enthused by my own published work. I 



78 As Talked in the Sanctum 

have said to myself: * That is great. I 
wonder how I ever came to do it ? If I can 
improve on that I shall be heard of yet/ 
And then, all aglow with my own greatness, 
I pitch in with a stimulus that carries me on 
for an hour or more. There ! has any one 
else ever felt the same, — felt this modest 
yearning to soar ? " 

The Reader, — " The Contributor must 
have had one of his contributions accepted 
by some journal that pays on acceptance. 
How, otherwise, can we account for his sub- 
lime appreciation of his own work ? " 

The Contributor » — " The Reader lives so 
exclusively in a world of rejected manu- 
scripts that he is unable to recognize the 
true ring when he hears it. When he finds 
that it is possible to accept he is so thun- 
derstruck that he has to ride up and down 
in the elevator eight times before he is able 
to pen a gracious note to its author. He 
has set the refusal blanks to music, and sings 
them to waltz time, something like this : — 



As Talked in the Sanctum 79 

Dear Sir. 

La! la! la! 
We find ourselves unable to use the man- 
uscript submitted, and accordingly return it 
with thanks. 

La! la! la! 
It is impossible, among so many manu- 
scripts, to send criticism or explanation of 
the reasons why each is unavailable. 
La! la! la! 
Many are returned because their subjects 
or treatment are not just in the line the mag- 
azine may be in need of at the time ; or be- 
cause, among many that are good, we must 
select a few and return the rest. 
La! la! la! 
Much that is not adapted to the use of this 
magazine will be found available by other 
journals. 

La! la! la! Tra ! la! la! 

" I have had a story accepted and the 
check is in my pocket. Possibly I do feel 
encouraged; but that is neither here nor 
there. I was simply asking a question. 
Many a time have I laid down a book I 



8o As Talked in the Sanctum 

was reading, one that was so interesting that 
I could scarcely take my eyes from it, and, 
driven by a will stronger than my own, 
snatched up a half-completed story, and 
wrote and rewrote for dear life. It was the 
same old familiar impulse that I felt tug- 
ging at my heart strings as I listened to one 
of Verdi's operas. Only then it was not 
tangible ; it had not chosen its outlet. It is 
only once in a month or a year that a book 
has this influence, and the subject-matter of 
the book is as varied as are the things I write. 
I feel the thrill as I repeat their names, — 
* Les Miserables,* ' Henry Esmond,' ^ In 
the Tennessee Mountains,' ' The Story of a 
Country Town,' ^Norwood,' ' Doctor Johns,' 
and more than one of Ebers's, Harte's, 
Caine's, Weyman's, and Doyle's." 

The Reader, — "I gather from your 
remarks that Hugo, Thackeray, Bret 
Harte, and the rest did not live in 
vain." 

The Poet. — " I, too, have felt the divine 



As Talked in the Sanctum 8i 

afflatus ' within the book and volume of my 
brain/ " 

The Reader, — " Gentlemen, please do not 
misunderstand me. I am not a scoffer. I 
also have had the desire come upon me to 
write as I read, but I have stood out man- 
fully against it. Do ye likewise." 

The Reviewer took from his vest pocket 
a newspaper clipping and read the names of 
a lot of big-wigs in the literary profession 
and the books that had most helped them 
to become big-wigs. Big-wig, I think, is the 
term for one thousand candle-power literary 
lights, rather than big guns. A little friend 
of the Sanctum, whose father is a member 
of the State Legislature, has just entered 
school. The teacher, one day, was trying 
to instil into the Httle ones' minds the first 
great lesson of all, — to keep their bright 
eyes open, to observe. Then she bade 
them put their books aside and suddenly 
asked how many pages the book contained. 
No one had noticed save the Sanctum's Httle 



82 As Talked in the Sanctum 

friend, and he answered promptly, " One 
hundred and thirty-four." Then she asked 
who was the author of the " What-is-this ? 
This-is-a-cat " book. Our Httle man and 
three others out of a class of eighteen replied 
correctly. I was very proud of him. I saw 
the career of a lawyer, reporter, or natu- 
ralist open up. Then came some ques- 
tion about the great cannons that were being 
tried, day by day, at Presidio. " Did any 
one in the class ever see a big gun ? " 
Up went Bennie's hand. " I saw hun- 
dreds, teacher, when I went with mamma 
to Sacramento. And my papa is one, 
too ! " he finished, with a ring of childish 
pride in his voice. I saw the distinction 
at once between a " big-wig " and a " big- 
gun." 

Among the Hst of books that the afore- 
mentioned authors honored by acknowledg- 
ing, we found, once or twice, Shakspere, the 
Bible, Homer, and Virgil, while one referred 
condescendingly to Moliere ; but the majority 



As Talked in the Sanctum 83 

cited books and writers that were entire 
strangers to the Sanctum : they had Impos- 
ing Latin and Greek names that commanded 
our awe at once, although they did not 
awaken a glimmer of Intelligence In our 
several faces. I looked in vain for some 
mention of " Robinson Crusoe *' ; the Par- 
son was convinced that It was the fault 
of the printer that "Pilgrim's Progress" 
had been overlooked, and the Contribu- 
tor said flatly that the big-wigs were 
posing. 

The Contributor, — " To. be honest, I will 
wager that Sir John Lubbock, Professor 
Huxley, or Mr. Ruskin, if it came down 
to a question of final, individual decision, 
would see the entire forty-two books of 
' Hermes Trismeglstus ' in the same embar- 
rassing position as Shadrach, Meshach, and 
Abednego, rather than have the world lose 
'Vanity Fair' or the 'Scarlet Letter.' I 
have heard of the 'Y-KIng.' I know it 
was written eleven centuries before Christ 



84 As Talked in the Sanctum 

by a Mister Wang-wang of the Celestial 
Empire. I never read one of its three 
thousand songs, and I don't believe that all 
of them would inspire me to write one chap- 
ter of my novel. I may be but an aver- 
age American, but I don't believe that the 
'Y-King,' the Vedas, the 'Zend-Avesta,' the 
' Tagenistae ' of Aristophanes, the ' Lyrics * 
of Theognis, the Megarian, the ' Works and 
Days ' of Hesiod, with a half-dozen authors 
of the Augustan age thrown in, have done 
one-tenth as much toward shaping and stim- 
ulating the talents of our revered big-wigs, 
in spite of their own positive assertions, 
as the scantily noticed works of the Eliza- 
bethan writers and our modern novelists. 
You cannot take a book, no matter how 
erudite, with firm determination to be in- 
spired. Books are dependent on moods 
and surroundings. You may read the same 
volume one day, through a glass darkly, 
and the next, sympathetically. However 
much we may owe to the so-called classics, 



As Talked in the Sanctufn 85 

still I think the good books of our youth 
are the ones, possibly unrecognized even 
to-day, that have had the greatest influ- 
ence in shaping our thoughts, and possi- 
bly our careers.'* 

The Reviewer mentioned his best-be- 
loved book. I do not think it would be 
fair to chronicle it here, as it was not a 
classic, and the big-wigs would probably 
never own up to having read it. It was 
a sweet, simple story of boy-and-girl love 
on a tropical island. There was a httle de- 
scription in it, not much of any value, no 
epigrams, no foreign phrases, no analysis, 
and yet it had taken firm hold of something 
in the Reviewer's life and had never let go. 
It had taught him a lesson that had made 
him better and purer. He did not main- 
tain that his author had any right to a place 
by the side of Martial, Horace, or Catullus 
— neither would he have loved him better 
if he had. 

Sometimes I am afraid to reread one of 



86 As Talked in the Sanctum 

these books that have helped shape my life. 
I do not want to discover their imperfec- 
tions in the light of my larger experience. 
I am jealous of their place in my memory. 
Yet they have never disappointed me. How 
can they, when, between every line, I read 
the aspirations and ambitions of my own 
fresh young mind, and at the end of every 
chapter behold a flashlike view of how those 
dreams were realized. " Robinson Crusoe " 
and " Swiss Family Robinson " are fairly 
charged with the unuttered determination 
some day to live on a tropical island in a 
tropical sea, and are possibly dearer to me 
because the determination was really carried 
out. As I thumb the greasy old pages (for 
the books were old before my time) I am 
once more on my island. All about us are 
verdure-covered islets, that but a century 
ago were the homes of the fierce Malayan 
pirates. A rocky beach, that contracts and 
expands as the tide rises and falls, encircles 
the island, on which glisten a hundred varie- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 87 

ties of shells, exposing their delicate shades 
of color to the sun. Coral formations of 
endless design and shape form a submarine 
garden of wondrous beauty, through whose 
shrubs, branches, and ferns the brilliantly 
colored fish of the southern seas sport like 
goldfish in some vast aquarium. From 
under a great almond tree we watch the 
sun sink slowly to a level with the masts 
of a bark that is bound for Java and the 
Bornean coasts. The black, dead lava of 
the island becomes molten for the time. 
A faint breeze nestles among the long fan- 
like leaves of the palm, and brings out the 
rich yellow tints with their background 
of green. A soft, sweet aroma comes 
from out the almond tree. The red 
sun and the white sails of the bark sail 
away together for the Spice Islands of the 
South Pacific. The dream of our child- 
hood is being realized, and there is no 
disappointment. 

The Poet, — ''I trust that 'The Divine 



88 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Comedy ' has never brought about a like 
result to the Reader." 

The Contributor. — "Inferno is too good 
a place for — " 

TheParson. — ''Y\^\ ^^V 

The Office Boy. — " Proof! " 



VIII 

IT is the simplest thing in the world to 
make a magazine pay, and the method 
is no secret. There is without doubt many 
an ambitious journalist on this coast ready 
to start a rival to our own the moment he 
is assured that the venture will win him 
fame and money. It may not be good 
politics for the Sanctum to lay its heart 
bare, but a secret is no secret when shared 
by a dozen persons and the Office Boy. 
The magazine promoter needs but just 
money enough to print his first issue ; for, 
if he take advantage of the Sanctum's 
receipt, money will pour in until he will 
imagine that the windows of heaven have 
been opened for his benefit. 

Here it is. Just know what the people 
want to read and give it to them. Napo- 
89 



go As Talked in the Sanctum 

leon had no difficulty in winning battles. 
He always saw just where to strike, and 
he struck with all his might. He knew 
instinctively where his troops would be 
of the most service, and he did not hesi- 
tate. He did the right thing at the right 
time. 

Bind together ten articles, stories, sketches, 
or poems, each one of which will demand 
the attention of ten thousand people, and 
you need not worry about your printer's 
bills. Make a magazine popular. All that 
is needed is popular literature. If one short 
story will make an author famous, it stands 
to reason that one popular article a month 
ought to make a magazine sell. 

But the rub comes in deciding what will 
catch the public eye. Did you ever try to 
make up a list of subjects on which articles 
could be written that would have a fair 
chance of selling, each, say, five hundred 
copies of a magazine ? It is lots of fun. 

The Office Boy. — " The mail ! " 



As Talked in the Sanctum 91 

There are seven manuscript stories, one 
with twelve cents postage due ; four manu- 
script articles ; three letters of advice ; two 
kicks ; twenty-one postal card requests for 
sample copies, seventeen of which are south 
of the Mason and Dixon line ; a change of 
address ; seven subscriptions ; one discon- 
tinuance ; eleven manuscript poems, and a 
design in ink for a tail-piece. 

The Reader. — "Here are four sketches, 
apropos of our talk on salable manuscripts. 
While I read their titles, let the Sanctum 
decide how many magazines each would 
sell: — 

"i. 'An Ascent of Popocatepetl.' 2. 'A 
Journey to California in '49.' 3. ' The 
Intemperance of Temperance.' 4. ' Feath- 
ered Songsters of the Pacific Coast.' " 

The Sanctum. — " Possibly fifty — to their 
authors." 

The Reader. — "I should judge from 
the first paragraph of each, that all four of 
the manuscripts submitted are well written 



92 As Talked in the Sanctum 

and make interesting reading, and yet the 
unanimous verdict is that if they were pub- 
lished in any one number of the magazine 
their united selling abilities would be fifty. 
In other words, our rival who expects to 
make his magazine pay would do well not to 
choose any one of them." 

The Poet, — "And yet, no doubt, they 
would be more satisfactory to the regular 
magazine reader and subscriber than the 
special article that will sell ten thousand 
copies to the irregular buyers. Do you 
remember how weary the public became 
before the War articles were finished in 
the Century ? And yet they trebled the 
receipts of that company, and secured the 
attention of a class of readers that had 
never before cared whether the magazine 
lived or died." 

The Contributor, — " There are special 
articles that nine good judges would swear 
were inspirations and would sell thousands, 
but they are financial failures because of 



As Talked in the Sanctum 93 

the character of the special audiences inter- 
ested. There was the twenty page special 
in our April number on ' The Jew in San 
Francisco; It was written by a Jewish 
rabbi and a Gentile, both of whom were 
interesting and accurate writers, and it was 
beautifully illustrated. It appealed directly 
to sixty thousand Jews, all well-to-do, in 
this city, and a hundred thousand more in 
this magazine's field. A big edition was 
printed, you remember. It was a dire finan- 
cial failure, although a multitude of papers 
noticed and copied it. Why? Because of 
the peculiar characteristics of the class ap- 
pealed to. Those most interested bought 
a few copies and passed them around; a 
penny saved is a penny earned. On the 
other hand, you will remember that the 
Artist's contribution in the July number 
on 'Some San Francisco Illustrators ' was a 
tremendous and unexpected success. It 
sold out the entire edition, and yet it only 
appealed to a few dozen artists and their 



94 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

friends, the assessable valuation of whose 
combined property would not cause a cov- 
etous smile to creep over the face of any of 
the Jews cited in the former article. Why, 
again ? Because talent is generous to a 
fault, and wealth miserly to a degree. So, I 
say, there is much in choosing an audience. 

"The responsible head of a magazine, 
unless he be a born editor with the mark 
on his brow, takes the same chances in 
choosing the matter for each number as 
the general does in ordering an attack, or the 
gambler in picking out his horse at the 
races. If he can only make up his mind 
as to what is timely and what the public 
appetite demands, he is a success, even if he 
cannot conjugate amo or if he spells bird 
with a u. There are books and books ; 
there are magazines and magazines ; but only 
once in a while is there a book, and once 
in two whiles a magazine, that holds the 
great roving, restless public eye or touches 
the indifferent public heart." 



As Talked in the Sanchmi 95 

The Reviewer, — "I suggest that instead 
of offering ten thousand dollars for a prize 
story, we offer a hundred to any one who 
will simply suggest a title for a popu- 
lar article — one for each month. It is 
easy enough to write ; what we want is 
ideas." 

The Manager, — " The offer is registered." 

The F arson. — "I have a subject to sub- 
mit that will sell the required ten thousand 
copies. ' Well-known Paintings in San 
Francisco Saloons, with incidentally a de- 
scription of interiors.* " 

There was meat for thought in the good 
Parson's remark. After all, man does not 
live by bread alone, and for one I wish that 
the magazine was as untrammelled as the 
Parson. No one dictates what he shall 
preach. A few Sundays since he took his 
text from Proverbs xxvii. 15, " A continual 
dropping in a very rainy day and a conten- 
tious woman are alike." The sermon lasted 
for half an hour. Not being a woman I 



96 As Talked in the Sanctum 

did not take it to myself, but it was strong, 
clear, and pointed, and I watched the face 
of the handsome sister that I was sure it 
was aimed at. She is worth a million, and 
I could not but admire the Parson's hardi- 
hood. " What perfectly lovely talks ! " she 
said, as we passed down the aisle together; 
"and the nicest thing about them is that 
they are so poetic and allegorical; I just 
love the dear old Parson ! " 

I looked up into the great rose window 
through which the sun was struggUng, and 
thought, " Should I take that independence 
and freedom of expression in the ' Etc' we 
should lose every advertiser within thirty 
days." And yet the Parson, who is so 
popular that he can say the most awful 
truths without exciting a murmur, reviles 
us for wanting to be popular. The good 
man does not know it, but it is these very 
tirades in good English that draw a large 
class of his wealthy pewholders. They 
like to feel the lash playing about their 



As Talked in the Sanctum 97 

tough hides. It is a pleasurable stimulant 
after six days of obsequiousness and fawnings 
from their peers. The Parson cannot lay- 
it on too strong to please them ; they even 
uncover their weal points so that he will be 
sure and see them. They chuckle quietly 
to themselves as they drop a gold piece on 
the plate, but woe to the man that points 
his finger. 

Of course there are things that are only 
thought even in the Sanctum, and so the 
Parson, not knowing what was going on 
inside of his colleagues' brains, continued 
a little pompously : — 

The Parson, — "I believe, and I think I 
live up to my beliefs, in complete indepen- 
dence of thought, independence of speech 
and action. If you run special articles be- 
cause you think they will pay and not be- 
cause you know they are good, you lose 
your independence." 

The Artist, — "How about the Sunday 



98 ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

odors of benzine that have come in with 
white kid gloves ? Does it show an inde- 
pendence of the male members ' olfactory- 
nerves or an independence in dress ? '* 

The Parson was more than particular 
about his dress — he was fashionable ; that 
is, he would be picked out of a crowd of 
well-groomed men as the best-dressed one. 
He does not gracefully stand chaffing on 
the subject, and maintains that he knows 
the difference between the gentleman and the 
dude. Then he is neat. His laundry is 
of the snowy whiteness of new linen. He 
will not excuse dirt. "Dirt is matter out 
of place," he remarks, as he gazes sorrow- 
ingly at the Occasional Visitor's vest front 
— for the O. V. is mxighty about the girth, 
and insists on wearing one white waistcoat 
a week. " Madam," said the Parson to his 
soprano, who is not noted for spotless cuffs 
and always asks everybody's opinion regard- 
ing their cleanliness, " if there is any doubt 
upon the subject, they are dirty." 



As Talked in the Sanctum 99 

The Parson. — "I believe in indepen- 
dence in dress among the Fiji Islanders ; but 
1 insist on dependence on dress in San 
Francisco. Good clothes force one to be 
respectable. They are an outward and 
visible sign, not that their owners will re- 
spect you and your opinions if you will, 
but that, at least, they will treat them with 
a certain dignity. The clergyman who goes 
about wearing the Occasional Visitor's vest " 
(the O. V. buttoned up his coat with a mo- 
tion that seemed to imply that he did not 
"respect the cloth "), " with a coat to match, 
trousers that bag at the knees, and laundry 
that has been trimmed, may be powerful in 
prayer, but his influence among his congre- 
gation will soon become nil. The country 
parson that borrowed a five-dollar gold piece 
^ of his deacon before the service and returned 
J it directly after leaving the pulpit had the 
right idea. A man, no matter how full of 
the spirit he may be, cannot talk boldly and 
confidently of the rewards of religion with 



loo As Talked in the Sanctum 

empty pockets any more than he can con- 
vince his hearers that religion pays when 
habited in old-fashioned, seedy garments. 
If my congregation is the best-dressed one 
in the city, I am proud of the fact, and I 
trust that my example has had something 
to do with it. In any case, I am ready to 
believe that their good clothes on the Sab- 
bath are, in part, a compliment to me." 

The Parson has a mission on the south 
side of Market. Through it he distributes 
the clothes that his well-dressed congregation 
have deemed too shiny at the elbows or 
too baggy at the knees to meet their pas- 
tor*s critical glance. Last Christmas a wagon 
load of such garments went into the homes 
of the poor from its doors. One of the 
Parson's vestrymen lost a leg at Appomat- 
tox, and he disdains to wear a cork one. 
His trousers lack one leg. After the ser- 
vices on the Sunday after Christmas an old 
gray-haired sister arose and announced, 
" My son John is a thousand times obHged 



As Talked in the Sanctum loi 

to yer, sir, fur the clothes ; but he says that 
if the man will send him the cloth for the 
leg he fergot, he will be able ter come ter 
church next Sunday." Not only the cloth 
but a complete suit was sent the sufferer by 
the hero of Appomattox, and in time John 
joined the church. . 

The Parson, — "It was the clothes that 
did it. It is much easier to win a man's 
heart when it is covered with a clean, self- 
respecting suit of clothes, than when hidden 
away in the greasy overalls of his week-day 
labors. The Contributor wants free baths 
for the poor ; I want to dress them in 
clothes that make them ashamed to get 
dirty. Clean hands and clean clothes make 
clean hearts." 

The Poet, — 

** Through tatterM clothes small vices do appear ; 
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all." 

The Parson. — " Shakspere and our Poet 
are no doubt exceedingly smart, but I prefer 
to follow the fashions — big sleeves, crino- 



I02 As Talked in the Sanctum 

lines or hoops, high collars, patent leathers, 
or ' willie-boys' — rather than have our 
men and women boycott the tailor and lose 
their ambition to vie with one another on 
good clothes and good deeds. You may 
go unshaven if you will, but I confess a 
weakness for the barber*s chair." 

The Parson*s talk had its effect, for the 
Occasional Visitor borrowed two bits of the 
sermonizer with the published intention 
of getting a shave and having his clothes 
brushed. 

The Office Boy, — " Proof! " 



IX 

THERE was a circus in town, and its 
cohorts were gleaming in purple and 
gold directly beneath the Sanctum windows. 
A score of horsemen and a half-dozen 
lancers were in the lead. There was a 
troupe of Sitting Bulls and a steam piano. 
The Office Boy, from the fire escape, 
dropped an overripe fig into the lap of 
the Queen of Carthage, who was luxuriously 
idling in a golden chariot. The Queen's 
Celtic-Ethiopian fan-bearer shook his gaunt- 
let at the admiring convoy of small boys 
who had dared to laugh. With her sceptre, 
her Majesty scraped the tropical jam from 
her regal robes, and the poet composed an 
original sonnet on the spot beginning, — 
" Uneasy is the head that wears a crown.'* 
103 



I04 ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

The accident, however, did not stop the 
procession, although it retired the Office 
Boy, and caused him to miss the elephants. 
From time immemorial the circus has 
come to town, to every town, once a year. 
The same old-fashioned circus, as change- 
less as marbles and whooping-cough. The 
small boy always goes, in spite of parents 
or funds, and the big boy relates the same 
old story of how he earned his way by 
carrying water for the elephants, when, more 
than likely, he stole in under the canvas. 
The newspapers of the following day con- 
tain the same familiar pictures of the small 
boy with bandaged neck who tried to watch 
three rings at once, and of the good deacon 
who went to teach his grandchildren natural 
history, and never mentioned the girls in 
tights who rode bareback. Everything is 
just the same as when the Parson and the 
Contributor were half a century younger. 
The Circassian lady and the living skeleton, 
the fat woman and the India-rubber man. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 105 

were there, and the lion tamer did the 
identical tricks that Hon tamers have been 
doing since the days of Daniel. Every- 
body ate peanuts, and it rained in the after- 
noon. The clown was not funny ; but the 
people laughed, felt they had been hum- 
bugged, vowed never to go again, and 
within a year were false to their oaths; The 
calliope struck up " The Suwanee River," 
and the Office Boy disappeared down the 
stairs with the speed of a California road- 
runner. 

There are some things that neither philos- 
ophy, reason, nor cold-blooded analysis can 
strip of their fascination. Why it is so be- 
longs more truly to the realms of philosophy 
than the fact itself. There is no mystery in 
the side show that we have not explored a 
hundred times ; there are no surprises in the 
circus ring that are not as ancient as the cir- 
cus itself; there are no strange animals in the 
cages, and no one expects them. It is some- 



io6 As Talked in the Sanctum 

thing else we go to see year after year — 
something that is as intangible and illusive 
as life. And with no two persons is that 
something the same. 

There was a fearful din in the great rings 
below. The chariot race was on, and the 
charioteers were urging their steeds with 
whip and voice. The sawdust was flying, 
and a clown was chasing and yelling behind 
the racers and then scrambling grotesquely 
under the ropes as the steeds overtook him. 
Boys were shouting and children screaming. 
For all the world it was the chariot race from 
"Ben Hur." But the Contributor noted it 
not. There was a dreamy, far-away look in his 
eyes. The circus he saw had only one ring ; 
the tent held but a handful of spectators ; 
there was but one elephant, and the giraffe 
was a thing of the sign painter's imagination. 
It was the circus he would see as long as he 
lived — the circus of his boyhood. 

For weeks all the barns that stood up 
against the wide, dusty, rambling country 



As Talked in the Sanctum 107 

road, the main street in Whitesville, had 
been covered with great flaunting pictures 
of lovely women, unbridled chargers, and 
savage beasts. Envied was the boy whose 
father owned one of these barns, for the 
wonderful advance agent had left behind 
him a golden stream of yellow cardboards 
that bore the magic legend, " Admit One." 

" Admit One ! " — what dreams, what 
hopes, what worlds it summoned to the 
mind's eye of each and every urchin ! 
The Parson never pictured Paradise in 
such glorious hues. Could he do so, he 
would be the greatest word painter since 
John the Evangelist. 

The woods that crowned the fat little hills 
glowed like a halo in their russets and golds 
and browns on the morning when the circus 
came to town. At five o'clock sharp we all 
stole out of bed and up the winding road 
that led over those hills to Spring Mills. 
The grass was still wet, while the spider 
webs, as big as plates, that had sprung up 



io8 As Talked in the Sanctum 

like mushrooms during the night, shone like 
pale morning moons in the light. The deep 
dust was warm below a crust of dew, and 
we ran our blue toes far into it as we raced. 
Just above Mr. Chapin's watering-trough a 
black, lumbering, swaying mass was coming 
down the hill. Clouds of dust hedged it in, 
and sharp, strange cries came from out the 
demi-lights, followed by a string of oaths 
that made us catch our several breaths. We 
scrambled through the fringe of elders and 
up on the rail fence, as the elephant, with a 
little red-fuzzed being on his back, burst 
upon our enraptured vision. 

No elephant again was ever half as big. 
We dared hardly breathe until, from the 
tops of great boxlike wagons whose sides 
were covered with the counterfeit present- 
ment of lions, tigers, and a dozen animals that 
never seemed quite real before, some show- 
men spied us. Then we gradually gathered 
courage and shouted back timid answers to 
their coarse jokes. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 109 

It did not strike us then that we were 
parts of a picture that had never been 
painted, but will some day. " The Circus 
Coming to Town/' as we knew it, would 
win the medal for the artist. The dust 
begrimed, shopworn elephant, the score of 
gaudy cages, the draped grand band wagon, 
the little company of sleepy riders on spirit- 
less horses, the cheap chariot trailing igno- 
miniously behind the baggage van, the 
heads of the " dazzling queens of the ring " 
peeping from between the canvas covers of 
a leather-springed couch, — all half revealed 
in clouds of heavy dust, the brown of the 
road, the red of the sumac, the green of 
fields and the gold of the stubble, the soft blue 
of the sky, — and the wonder-eyed admira- 
tion of a dozen little country boys in blue 
jeans and chip hats, are but items in the 
unconscious stage. Far below us was the 
valley and the little town — one aimless 
street two miles long, with houses and gar- 
dens and trees on either side, and a district 



no As Talked in the Sanctum 

schoolhouse at either end. Cryder Creek 
wound and twisted and doubled back and 
forth as though loath to leave the grist mill 
and the swimming pond. 

The chariot race was over. The din sub- 
sided so that the clang of the cars without 
was distinguishable. I pressed the Con- 
tributor's hand. He looked up with a 
start. There was a foolish, happy smile on 
his lips. 

" Where have you been ? " I asked, al- 
though I knew. 

" Carrying water for the elephant,'* he 
answered, and we both laughed. 

The Poet.— 

" How sad and bad and mad it was ! 
But then, how it was sweet ! '* 

The Contributor was passing up and down 
the Sanctum in shoes whose creaking testi- 
fied arrogantly to their newness. 

The Contributor, — " The small boy is a 
born hero-worshipper. At ten he falls down 



As Talked in the Sanctum iii 

before the lion tamer and the leader of the 
brass band. When the circus departs, he 
stretches a rope from one gnarled apple tree 
to another and, time and again, comes within 
an inch of breaking his precious neck in 
emulating the tight-rope walker. At twelve 
or fifteen his big brother commands an 
undivided admiration that Robin Hood 
never received ; such as only Boswell knew 
how to bestow. At sixteen or seventeen 
he has picked out some national hero and 
burns to make public speeches and vote for 
him when he runs for Governor or Presi- 
dent. It is fortunate if his hero is worthy 
of his worship, if no one shatters his 
idol. It is better that the worshipper 
should grow strong and reliant in the fame 
of the worshipped." 

The Reader, — " The Contributor's senti- 
mental mood does him credit. The boy is 
but father to the man. Call in the Office 
Boy and find out which one of us he has 
placed on a pedestal." 



112 ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

The Office Boy, — " There is a man out- 
side with a bill for — " 

The Sanctum, — " Tell him to call around 
again after the magazine comes out." 

The Office Boy,— (In outer office) "All 
gone out to lunch." 

Man with Bill — "This is the seven- 
teenth time IVe been up here, and I don't 
intend to come again. See ! " 

The Office Boy, — " No, I don't see." 

Man with Bill, — " Don't get fresh, 
son!" 

The Office Boy, — "I won't, if that's what 
ails you." 

Af^«.— "What's that?" 

The Office 5^> — "The Wilson Bill has 
put a duty on salt." 

Man, — " This is no salt bill ; it's for 
shoes." 

The Office Boy, — " Snow-shoes ? " 

Man. — " Naw, just shoes." 

The Office Boy, — "Oh, just feet shoes. 
There's some mistake ; we all wear boots." 



As Talked in the Sanctum 113 

The Reader, — " That boy needs a lesson 
or two in hero-worship." 

The Contributor. — " He will do." 

And the good man's shoes were hushed 
while the gentleman with a bill for the same 
stamped defiantly down the hall. 

The Office Boy, — " Proof! " 



" T HAVE been making a collection of 

A letters to the Editor from would-be 
contributors/* remarked the Reader as he 
placed a big blue "R & D" on the envelope 
in his hand. 

The Parson. — "I would prefer a collection 
of scalps. If you intend to make sport of the 
struggles of these mute, inglorious Miltons, I 
must refuse to be a party to the proceedings/' 

The Contributor, — " And yet I under- 
stand his reverence attended a bull fight at 
Madrid." 

The Artist. — " But have you heard him 
lecture on it ? It is the most realistic thing 
I have ever listened to. I nearly jumped 
out of my pew and hurrahed when the mata- 
dor sprang to the bulFs neck and gave it 
the coup de grace. I made up my mind then 
and there that I would go a thousand miles 
114 



As Talked in the Sanctum 115 

out of my way to see a bull fight as the Par- 
son saw It." 

The Parson. — " You understand my mo- 
tive. I tried, in my humble way, to arouse 
the indignation of my hearers over the 
cruelty, ferocity, and inhumanity of this 
relic of barbarous ages." 

The Artist. — " You succeeded. Every 
member of your congregation would break 
his precious neck to see such a show. I do 
not forget either that it put three hundred 
dollars into the treasury of the Guild." 

The Contributor. — " Civilization is only a 
garment. It will wear out or slip off once 
in a while, in spite of the Decalogue, and 
reveal the savage." 

The Reader. — " Mine has been worn off 
by such missives as these. Listen, fellow- 
Apaches and matadors : — 

' Dear Editor : I feel that I know you. I am 
a constant reader of your fairly well done "As 
Talked in the Sanctum." It has occurred to me 
that the magazine might be improved in certain 



ii6 As Talked in the Sanctum 

departments. Of course you are not in a position 
to judge as to the merits of your own work — be- 
ing on the inside. Now I am willing to show 
you clearly how you look to others and write you 
a letter of personal and confidential advice once a 
month, which, if you will strictly follow, will place 
your magazine far ahead in every particular of 
every magazine published. In addition, I could 
create and edit a department that w^ould make a 
place for you in a million hearts. I submit a list 
of one hundred and twelve brilliant epigrams. I 
have seventeen hundred of these ofF-flashes of my 
brain that I have jotted down during the last 
twenty-eight years. I claim no originality for them, 
although they are original. They came to me as 
I slept, walked, and ate. They are thunderbolts 
and lightning strokes, world thoughts of which I 
am the humble vehicle. I am willing to share 
with you the fame they will bring me. Kindly 
remit the first fifty dollars as soon as possible, so 
that my mind can be free from petty cares to enter 
your service wholly. 

P. S. The epigrams might be illustrated. 

The Epigrams : — 

A new wagon is better than a broken one. 

A maiden that has never loved does not know 
what love means. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 1 1 7 

It is dangerous to ride an unbroken mustang. 

Life is a mystery. 

It is better to be than not to be. 

Etc., etc., etc., etc' " 

As no one ventured a remark on this first 
of the Reader*s collection, the conversation 
lagged. Such missives were too common to 
excite comment. There is no better oppor- 
tunity for the study of human nature than 
the relations between editor and contributor. 
It is difficult to find a word or phrase to 
describe it. It is seldom quite friendship, 
never open war, possibly a sort of "veiled 
hostility." The standpoint of the editor, 
who is the purchaser, and the contributor, 
who is the vender, are so widely different 
that it is beyond all reason to expect them 
ever to come together. The farmer brings 
his potatoes to market with the hope of sell- 
ing them. If he fails, he holds no local 
demand for the potatoes, and sends them 
elsewhere. The merchant might buy out 
of sentiment, but no one expects it. Be- 



1 1 8 As Talked in the Sanctmn 

cause he has purchased other potatoes is 
not a sign of partiaHty. In a great measure 
the case is a parallel one. An editor seldom 
buys manuscript for sentimental reasons, 
although he continually has appeals like 
this : — 

" I send you the enclosed poems. They are 
original, though you ^nay not think so, because they 
are so much like Milton's. I hope you will be 
able to pay what they are worth, for I am a poor 
widow, and if I do not get enough to live on from 
my poetry, I shall have to take in washing — and 
there is so much competition from the Chinese in 
that line here in San Pasqual." 

Another sad case : — 

"Will you not accept the enclosed poem on 
Mount Tamalpais.? I need the money. Father 
fell and broke his leg last March and has not been 
able to do a stroke of work since. If I could 
afford to pay for a doctor to come up from Marys- 
ville, every one tells us Father would get well. 
Will you not help me by taking this poem ? It 
is my first poem, although I am very clever at 
jingles." 



As Talked in the Sanctum iig 

Alas, there was more poetry on hand in 
the office than could be used for two years. 
Two poems — a sonnet and a quatrain — 
had been published on Mount Tamalpais 
within twelve months and, lastly, the poems 
offered were of the " Little Ella Lee '* 
variety. No doubt the people at Crayon 
Gulch and San Pasqual held indignation 
meetings when the poems came back. Yet 
they would have written us down " tender- 
feet '* if we paid one dollar for a hundred 
pounds of rotten potatoes. 

"If you will send me what you consider the 
enclosed story worth, I will donate it toward 
building the church. We are having a hard 
struggle to keep our little light burning here at 
Dogtown, and I am devoting my pen to the ser- 
vice of the Lord." 

She might have devoted the postage 
stamps she used on her lucubrations. 

Then comes the youth who wants glory, 
who has talent, or thinks he has, which 
amounts to the same thing. He tells you 



I20 As Talked in the Sanctum 

grandly not to let the price stand in the 
way. He appeals to your own first steps 
and early struggles to obtain a literary foot- 
ing ; he complains of the injustice of other 
editors, and insinuatingly remarks that the 
editor of the Esparto Chronicle has spoken 
very highly of your good judgment and 
general kindness. 

You admire the refreshing ingenuousness 
of the supplicant, and wish him well. Some 
day he may have one of his bright stories 
accepted, and then he will be shocked to 
discover that people do not point him out 
on the street, or whisper as he passes, 
" There goes the author of ' A Living 
Sacrifice.' " It will take him years to for- 
give the Sanctum for refusing his first manu- 
script, and his unspoken prayer will be to 
become so famous that he will be able 
haughtily to refuse our timid request for 
something from his pen. 

A letter came in the mail to-day which 
briefly said : — 



As Talked in the Sanctum 121 

" Dear Sir : You will no doubt be delighted 
to hear that my essay on Walt Whitman, which 
you refused, was accepted by the Atlantic^ 

It was sarcastic in tone, but the writer 
little suspected that we were honestly pleased 
with her success. Had her essay been on 
Joaquin Miller and as well written, it would 
have been gladly welcomed. Walt Whit- 
man does not belong to our field. 

But the most senseless of all the knockers 
at the Sanctum door is the one who devotes 
a long letter to fulsome praise of the accom- 
panying manuscript. "You will notice," a 
full-grown man with an M.D. after his 
names writes, "how strongly I have drawn 
the character of Lyda. She seems almost 
to speak, and her actions and words are so 
perfect that she commands the admiration 
and homage of the reader from the first. 
I consider the pathos of the last chapter 
equal to Dickens, and you will find the 
humor irresistible." Another : " Although I 
am a frequent and a valued contributor to 



122 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Eastern periodicals, I have decided to favor 
my own magazine with one of my best 
efforts." It is useless to multiply examples, 
or to speak of the literary bore who always 
insists on seeing the editor personally. 
Necessarily, the editor stands on the defen- 
sive. He has a hundred pages, more or 
less, to fill monthly with subjects that he 
feels will interest the widest class of readers. 
If he allows his sympathies to warp his 
judgment, he hears from it through the busi- 
ness ofBce. He is not in the kindergarten 
business, neither is it customary for him to 
accept fees for advice. But the question is 
as old as Mount Diablo, and will exist when 
the last trump is sounded. 

The Contributor. — " We were speaking 
about Cleveland's Venezuela Message, and, 
if I remember rightly, we agreed to support 
the Executive even to the point of asking 
for colonels' commissions. If nothing better 
comes of the patriotic wave that has swept 



As Talked in the Sanctum 123 

over the country, I, for one, hope that it will 
give Congress something to do other than 
revive the tariff discussion. The McKinley 
and Wilson Bill agitations, regardless of the 
individual merits of either bill, brought mis- 
ery enough to this country for one decade. 
Supposedly, a protective tariff is for the pro- 
tection of home industries and not for the 
collection of revenue. If Horace Greeley 
were at the head of the Tribune^ he would not 
urge, as its editor now does, the restoration 
of a former tariff schedule. Neither would 
he maintain that the way to raise a national 
revenue is to clap on higher duties. I am 
in favor of protection of home industries, 
but I am not in favor of protection for reve- 
nue only. This talk of revenue in connec- 
tion with protection is disgusting. Plunge 
this country into six months of tariff discus- 
sions, and the loss of revenue from closed 
factories, business uncertainty, and destruc- 
tion of confidence would be a hundred times 
more than any tariff could bring in twice the 



124 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

time. The income of the government de- 
pends on the stability of trade and the 
permanence of fiscal laws. As a whole, 
leave the tariff alone. If it is found advisa- 
ble and in line with the public needs to place 
a higher duty on any one thing, well and 
good ; but simply because wool, or steel, 
needs more protection, it does not follow 
that ink and chewing gum do." 

The Parson. — " It is to be hoped for the 
Contributor's sake that there will be no tariff 
on chewing gum. But I must confess that 
I am not so much interested in what Con- 
gress might do as in what Congress ought 
to do. I believe that the President's action 
will save Venezuela's territory to herself, but 
who will raise a finger to save the lives and 
honor of the native Christians in Turkey ? 
We complacently read of the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew and say that such things 
are impossible in this century. The horrors 
of the legalized murders and ravishments 
that are taking place day after day in Armenia, 



As Talked in the Sanctum 125 

right under the eyes of Christian Europe and 
America, dwarf the most lurid accounts of 
the persecutions of the Huguenots. Do you 
think if I were President of this country, 
or Queen of Great Britain, that I would sit 
still and allow a weak, dissolute Turk to 
perpetrate such a crime of the century ? 
Not I ; and I am a man of peace. Sooner 
or later the unspeakable Turk has got to be 
brought to his senses. And the nation that 
undertakes the role of master will win the 
plaudits of history. We deprecate war be- 
tween the two great branches of the Anglo- 
Saxon race, and boast that England and 
America, hand in hand, are the great Chris- 
tianizing power of the century. ' The fear 
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.* 
A good, honest broadside will instil the holy 
fear in the heart of the Father of the Faith- 
ful, and do more for the cause of Christianity 
than all the commissions, or state papers, 
since the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Let us 
slap the Turk*s cheek ; and, if he turns the 



126 As Talked in the Sanctum 

other, let us slap that as well. I believe in 
using our ironclads where they will build up 
a civilization and not tear it down/* 

The Reader. — "I move that we memori- 
alize Congress." 

The Artist, — " Or send out fighting par- 
sons and men-of-war as missionaries." 

We are never quite sure when the Parson 
is in earnest. It was he who made the 
famous speech when introducing Dr. Parsons, 
the Unitarian divine, to his congregation. 
"I have asked Dr. Parsons to talk to us 
this morning," he said; "Dr. Parsons does 
not believe in damnation, and he thinks we 
shall all be saved. But we hope and pray 
for better things." 

The Office Boy.—'' Proof! " 



TT^j 



XI 

^ALKING shop again!" and the 
_ Parson politely screened a yawn as 
the Manager of the Subscription Depart- 
ment interrupted himself to look up a batch 
of letters received from the several district 
schools of the State in rejoinder to repeated, 
possibly a little too imperative, invitations to 
place our magazine in their school libraries. 

The Manager paused, with his hand on 
the door: "As I am neither 'a theological 
theologue or pedagogical pedagogue,' I fail 
to see how I am in any way responsible tor 
the literary pabulum of this thin-skinned 

circle." . „. . ^^ 

Following the lead of the Suisun Vtdette, 
a number of our highly prized exchanges 
had felt called upon to chide us editorially 
for _ " talking shop." The Milpitas Pofu- 

127 



128 As Talked in the Sanchun 

list remarked sarcastically that we " no doubt 
talked to conceal our minds." 

The Parson, — "It is an easy charge to 
make and one that admits of little argu- 
ment ; but it occurs to me that the good 
people who are most apt to bring it are not, 
as a general thing, singularly eminent for 
the luminosity or cleverness of their own 
conversations." 

The Contributor. — " As we are talking 
behind society's back, let that remark pass 
as an axiom." 

The F arson. — " So many things suggest 
themselves to me in this line that I think, 
instead of taking the Manager to task, that 
I will ally myself with him. A man of 
affairs spends two-thirds of his life in his 
shop. Possibly one night in a week he 
accompanies his wife to the house of a 
friend. It is his duty to make himself 
agreeable — to have on his society air. If 
he does not, — ' How stupid you were 
to-night, dear, — you never opened your 



As Talked in the Sanctum 129 

lips. That horrid Mrs. So-and-So was 
there, and I was so anxious to show you 
off!* Mrs. So-and-So is a famous talker, 
she does not talk shop. There is no shop 
on earth that would hold her She talks 
about everything. Nothing goes into her 
brains that does not come instantly out of 
her mouth. She interrupts herself, but she 
never allows any one else to interrupt her. 
She has a strong mannish voice, rather pleas- 
ant, her grammar is good, but her ideas 
scatter like the seven plagues of Egypt. 
Her laugh is loud, but infectious. Her 
stories are bright, yet the best part of them 
is her own laugh of appreciation. She 
does all the talking for a dinner party of 
sixteen, and does it gladly. It is only when 
the men are left to smoke their cigars that 
they are permitted to settle back and enjoy 
themselves in talking shop. And yet it is 
not shop any more than our Sanctum talks 
are shop. Last evening we smoked two 
cigars, for which I received a well-merited 



130 As Talked in the Sanctum 

lecture on my way home, while the Banker 
was apologizing for Mr. Carlisle's so-called 
popular bond issue. 

"The Parsoness said, 'What in the world 
were you talking about, dear, that made you 
forget the ladies ? — something you are 
ashamed of, I know.' 

" * We were discussing bonds, my dear,* 
I answered humbly. 

" ' Bonds ? — shop,' she snapped with 
more warmth than I felt the subject justified. 

" ' And what were the ladies talking 
about ? ' I ventured. 

" ' Mrs. Nob Hill was discussing a per- 
fectly lovely trousseau that she had made 
in Paris for Mabel's marriage to Count 
Oh ! what is his awful name ? * 

" ' Lovelace,' I suggested. 

" ' No, you know Count, Count Hard- 
upsy. It was just magnificent. I never 
reahzed how the time flew until I looked 
at the clock.' 

" And then the dear soul forgot all about 



As Talked in the Sanctum 131 

her grievance and talked the most delight- 
ful dressmaker's shop all the way home. 
She even neglected to remark that she hoped 
the time would come when she could have 
a carriage to go out to full dress affairs in. 
We all talk shop, even our own critics — 
and they, worst of all. I listened to the Par- 
soness in conversation with one of them. 

" The Parsoness, — ' Good evening, Mr. 
Never-Talk-Shop. I am glad to see you 
here. It has been some months since we met.* 

" Mr, Never-Talk-Shop. — ' Yes. You see 
I have so little time to myself. I rush dowri^ 
to the office every morning at 8 o'clock. I 
snatch just time to go up to the Pacific 
Union for lunch and then never get home 
until 7. It is awful to work so hard ; but 
then I tell Mrs. N. T. S. that some day I 
will drop the office and take a little trip to 
Paris. You know, I commenced in life 
before I was five, blowing the bellows in 
my father's blacksmith shop,' etc. 

" When Mrs. P. said good night to him. 



132 As Talked in the Sanctum 

he remarked to me, ' Mrs. P. and I had such a 
good chat while you and Mrs. N. T. S. were 
over there talking shop. Parsons, you know, 
are great for talking shop.* And he then 
laughed until his plate became loose. 

" Caesar's Commentaries are an example 
of shop talked to some purpose. I am 
sorry that Alexander, Hannibal, and Shak- 
spere, and the Witch of Endor, did not talk 
more shop. The world would have been 
wiser, and many of the dark corners in his- 
tory would have been lighted up." 

The Reviewer. — " Our creditors have an 
embarrassing manner of talking shop." 

The Artist. — " Vive le Magasin. Call in 
the Subscription Manager." 

The Subscription Manager. — " Not if the 
Artist is going to take such a mean advan- 
tage of our Sister Republic." 

The Artist. — "I never originated a pun 
knowingly in my life. A pun always sur- 
prises me, whether I am parent of it or the 
Reader ; but it never amuses." 



As Talked in the Sanctum 133 

The Reader. — " My pun can go a step 
farther in descent, for each of them is a- 
parent.** 

There are thirty-two hundred schools in 
the State of California. The State is gen- 
erous with its money, and allows each dis- 
trict to have a library. This magazine has 
asked the fifty-seven counties to indorse it 
as worthy of a place in these libraries. All 
but three have complied. Following up 
this indorsement it has mailed return pos- 
tal cards to the several District School 
Clerks, requesting them to subscribe. The 
Subscription Manager sent out eight sets 
of these cards, and then, not securing all 
the schools, he determined that he would at 
least get a reply from the unresponsive ones ; 
he decided on a bold stroke and composed 
a card as follows : — 

" Dear Friend : This is the ninth time we 
have written you. We are going to write nine 
times more if necessary. We are all Californians, 



134 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

working for the best interests of the State. We 
have been on the Coast twenty-seven years. How 
long have you ? It is not asking much of your 
rich district to take the only magazine on the 
Coast. Will you subscribe ? If not, will you 
write us } If not, why not shake hands ? " 

It brought either a subscription or a reply 
from nearly every district. For the benefit 
of the Sanctum he had preserved a choice 
array of these answers. 

Selections done into EngHsh by the Sub- 
scription Manager : — 

" We do not want your magazine. We 
have been in the State long enough to know 
our business.'* 

" When I become so bereft of common 
sense that I cannot attend to my own busi- 
ness, you will be the first man I will call on. 
Send ninety cards if you like. Been on the 
Coast long enough to be your grandfather. 
Shake." 

" This is nine times I have told you, No.** 

" We are renting an organ and thinking 



As Talked in the Sancfmn 135 

of buying it. I have been here nine years and 
used to get four and five cents for raisins, 
but now get but one and a half per pound. 
How long do you think I can stand it ? " 

" Your persistency is as sweet as a day in 
June." 

"You will have to write ten times to 
raise our funds." 

" Have been in California four and a 
half years, from Michigan, near St. Joseph." 

" Nine times is enough. No more. 
You are on the Coast twenty-seven years ? 
Born here, of course — native sons ? I am 
twenty-two years on the Coast, a Californian 
by choice, not by chance. When you talk 
of our ' rich district,' you are informed 
correctly. We have, as a library and appa- 
ratus, one map and a dictionary." 

"Have been on the Coast long enough 
to become acclimated — twenty years. Too 
many good things are superfluous." 

" Don't trouble yourselves any more on 
my account. No more at present." 



136 As Talked in the Sanctum 

" Your favors remind me of the old song 
entitled 'Ninety and Nine/ Shake ! ** 

" You have written nine times, and as 
you are an old Californian we cannot doubt 
you ; for we are one of them, having landed 
in Sacramento County on Christmas Day, 
1853, on the hurricane deck of an ox cart, 
and in consequence can go you a few better 
on the ' old * part. We are still young and 
truthful, having rubbed all that other part 
off against nuggets that we have not been 
fortunate enough to get our honest clutches 
on. Shake ! " 

" Always write on postals with paid 
reply to insure prompt attention." 

" No, we will not be offended if you 
continue to write until you secure our 
subscription. If you start on the job, I 
advise you to provide yourself with paper 
by the ream, pens by the gross, and ink 
by the barrel." 

The longest of the replies, but one of 
several received from the same trustee, is 



As Talked in the Sanctum 137 

so good that I venture to print it, untrans- 
lated. 

"Yours, in which you still urge the 
trustees of this school district to subscribe 
for your magazine, and also express a desire 
to further continue the correspondence on 
the subject, is received. In reply I have 
to say I am heartily in sympathy, and am 
eagerly anxious to continue a correspond- 
ence that cannot fail to be interesting and 
instructive. I have got a new style of 
pen, wholly glass ; its point is fairly tingling 
with eagerness to jot down the ideas that 
are throbbing in my brain on that subject. 
You are evidently laboring under a mis- 
apprehension of the condition of affairs in 
this school when you refer to us as strug- 
gling along without your magazine in our 
school library. My dear Sirs, let me inform 
you that we are not struggling along; we 
are gliding along on the smooth and placid 
surface of a prosperity that may be described 
as follows : the trustees are doing their duty 



138 As Talked in the Sanctum 

to the best of their ability, guided by a fair 
amount of intelligence. Our teachers, two 
young ladies, are efficient in industry and 
ability ; in fact, they are gems, physically, 
socially, intellectually, and professionally. 
Our pupils are bright, healthy, and studi- 
ous. The patrons of the school are happy 
and contented, believing the education of 
their offspring is being attended to honestly, 
intelligently, and well. This is the condition 
of affairs in this school. 

" Now hold down your ear ; I want to 
whisper to you the main reason why we 
do not take your magazine. There are so 
many attractive features about it that we 
are sure the pupils would be so fascinated 
with it that they would neglect their studies. 
Those attractive features would also tend 
to distract the teachers* attention from their 
duties. 

" All the trustees would like to take your 
magazine, but we have only time from our 
farm duties (we are all farmers) to read the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 139 

news in one of the great San Francisco 
dailies and our Bible. If we could take the 
time to read your magazine, we are not really 
financially able to subscribe for it. This 
financial embarrassment, we hope, is only 
temporary. It was brought about partly 
by the foolish tinkering with the govern- 
ment finances by Representatives McKinley 
and Wilson, and partly by the criminal 
demonetization of silver by Senator Sher- 
man over twelve years ago, and the balance, 
if anything more were needed, by the silly 
misapprehension of the people as to the 
correctness of President Cleveland's action 
in the matter of the Bond Sales. It has 
also been thought that the ' gold bugs ' of 
Wall Street, N.Y., had something to do with 
the financial pressure, but I think that is a 
mistake. The gold bugs of New York are, 
many of them, members of the church, and 
all of them good men, and would not do a 
mean thing like that. 

" Still wishing your magazine bountiful 



140 As Talked in the Sanctum 

success, and hoping for further correspond- 
ence, I am — 

" P. S. Is your magazine in need of an 
editor-in-chief or a managing editor ? If 
so, I think I know a man who could well 
fill the bill. He might lack a little in 
cheek and gall at first, but he is quick to 
catch on, and could quickly acquire a suffi- 
ciency of both if installed in the position." 

The Reviewer, — " Cheek, n. The side 
of the face below the eye on either side. — 
Gaul, n. France, anciently so-called." 

The Editor refused to join in the laugh, 
and seemed relieved when the young man 
with the spectacles opened the door. 

The Office Boy, — " Proof ! " 



XII 

"Y HAVE been thinking/* remarked the 
X Contributor, as he carefully dusted the 
leather cushion of his accustomed chair, " that 
there are many points in common between 
what we call primeval barbarism and nine- 
teenth-century civilization.'* 

The Artist rather encouraged the Con- 
tributor, the Parson, and the Occasional 
Visitor in their daily monologues. They 
did not interfere with his work. But there 
were times when they were deemed imperti- 
nences by the Editor and the Reader. 

" Yes ? " remarked the Artist, encourag- 
ingly- 

"Yes," echoed the Contributor, his eyes 

glowing with a big idea. 

Washington's Birthday fell on Saturday 
this year, making two holidays in succession. 
141 



142 As Talked in the Sanctum 

The Contributor had taken advantage of the 
summer-like February days to climb Mount 
Tamalpais. 

The Contributor, — " With Adam and Eve, 
or with the islanders of the South Seas, life 
is made up of a series of gorgeous holidays 

— legal holidays with the banks closed." 
The Artist, — " Pardon me one moment 

— would you mind raising your arm ? I 
want to get the position of your fingers — 
so. Now, go ahead." 

The Poet, — 

** If all the year were playing holidays. 
To sport would be as tedious as to work.*' 

The Contributor, — " As we emerge from 
barbarism, life becomes serious and prosaic, 
and days set apart for pure enjoyment are 
unknown. Early Christianity made the 
Sabbath a day of penance and prayer. As 
civilization progressed and mankind became 
gentle, an excuse was found for certain lapses 
from the rigid rules of the fathers. The 
Puritans would not celebrate their first goodly 



As Talked in the Sanctum 143 

crops and their peace with the Indians with 
ungodly Olympian games. They were not 
fully civilized. They appointed a day of 
solemn, mirthless feasting. It was a holiday, 
nevertheless. It was a step in the right 
direction, one that made Thanksgiving foot- 
ball possible two hundred years later. I 
thought it all out as I sat on the top of 
Tamaipais and looked through the golden 
mists across the Golden Gate toward the 
great city that was being glad that George 
Washington lived, if for no other reason 
than that he gave it another holiday." 

The Artist, — "You can lower your arm. 
Thanks. Now turn your head a trifle. I 
want to catch the curve of your neck — 
good." 

The Contributor. — "The fierce heat of 
August and the warm haze of September 
that ripened the crop of Puritan corn called 
forth one holiday ; the grim, bleak forests of 
Valley Forge and the blood of half-starved 
patriots at Saratoga and Yorktown gave birth 



144 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

to another. Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, 
Washington's Birthday, Christmas, New 
Year, Easter, Labor Day, — all marked the 
advance of the race toward the millennium, 
or, if you choose, denote a relapse for a few 
brief hours into the life when man lived not 
by the sweat of his brow." 

The Occasional Visitor, — " You neglect to 
include the Bohemian High Jinks season in 
the redwoods. Ah ! those glorious holidays 
in Camp Bohemia among the vast red mon- 
archs, where men become boys, and the banker 
unbends to his humblest debtor. It would 
be well if all men for a little space could ^take 
to the woods* as we Bohemians do, and know 
the delights of getting close to nature and to 
the hearts of our fellows. Yet it may be 
possible that it needs trees three hundred 
feet high and eighteen feet in diameter, and 
many of them, to house four hundred men 
for a fortnight. And such perfect days, 
when streamers of light fresco and enamel 
the redwoods' leafy roof, or when the fog 



As Talked in the Sanctum 145 

creeps in from the Pacific and fills all the 
higher arches with a clinging, fleecy mist 
like clouds of incense. Ah me, ah me ! '* 
The Poet, — 

" Who first invented work, and bound the free 
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down ? ' * 

The Contributor, — " No one ever accused 
me of being an Anglomaniac, but I would 
that we took in exchange for that slice of 
Venezuela that Britain covets her Bank 
Holidays, and shut our banks on Easter 
Monday, Monday in Whitsun week, first 
Monday in August, Good Friday, and 
first Monday in May. Who would be the 
loser? Not the laborer, who dons his 
Sunday best, takes his care-worn helpmate 
and family of half-grown children off the 
streets out on the warm sands below the 
CliflF House, or among the roses and green 
things of Golden Gate Park. The sunshine 
that never enters their damp, cheerless alley 
finds its ways into his heart, and he renews 



146 As Talked in the Sanctum 

his honeymoon and gets in touch with the 
hunger in his little ones* lives. His work 
the next day means something. He has 
resolved that Tommy and Mary shall have 
more holidays than have fallen to his bare 
lot. Not the Banker, who discovers that 
there is other music in Hfe that is as sweet' 
to his ears as the music of the gold that 
pours over his counter. 

" The Parson agrees that the Sabbath is 
a day of rest, pure and simple, and not a 
day of self-mortification. I have had two 
glorious holidays, Washington's Birthday 
and Sunday. I thank the Bible and the 
statute book for them, and now I am ready 
and willing to go to work.'* 

The Reader, — "Then, if the Artist has 
finished with your neck, possibly you would 
not object to holding copy for an hour 
or so." 

The Contributor ignored the invitation, 
and we fell to thinking of the holidays of 
long ago — of the chain of fadeless Satur- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 147 

days that began with our first pants and 
ended on the very threshold of manhood. 
It is too bad that the Saturday holiday 
cannot go on through life. I am sure the 
longevity of the human race would benefit 
by it. Five days a week are enough for the 
schools, why should not they be enough 
for the banks? 

Possibly it was the incense of the winter 
oranges that floated into the open window 
from the wagon below that brought back 
the perfume of those autumn holidays in 
blackberrying time. Just for a moment I 
grasped the taste of the almost forgotten 
fruit that grew so luscious among the black- 
ened logs under the scarlet sumachs. We 
were small epicures, every one of us. The 
ordinary berries were put in our patent pails, 
but the big ones, — large as thimbles and 
sweet and watery as melons, — they were 
our reward. We knew the art of eating 
them, — little end first, slowly, the lips 
tightly pressed together, the rich wine, cool 



148 As Talked in the Sanctum 

and pure, slipping regretfully down our 
throats. 

The Contributor's lips trembled reminis- 
cently as I rehearsed it all. 

Back and above the grand, paternal home- 
stead towered the " Pinnacle," its dome- 
shorn trees only protected from sun and 
rain by a stunted growth of sumach and 
beech. Just below its summit, on the 
further side, in a " slashing " through which 
the fire had swept years before, grew the 
biggest and sweetest berries in all Inde- 
pendence Township. 

We did not start until the morning sun 
had absorbed the heavy dews, for our ging- 
ham roundabouts were thin, and our feet 
bare, and berrying time only lacked a few 
weeks of nutting time and the frosts. 

With shouts and hellos we were up the 
steep hill, charging the dozy cattle from 
their nests and warming our blue toes where 
they had slept. The little valley, with its 



As Talked in the Sanctum 149 

shimmering creek, and Whitesville lay di- 
rectly below, and Uncle Tob*s mill pond, 
whose fringe of willow and beech cast reflec- 
tions like the scrawls in our Spencerian copy 
books. For a moment we rested to catch 
our breaths, then to loosen a great moss- 
coated bowlder and send it down through 
log fence and brush heap into the lawnlike 
meadow, to dull some unfortunate's scythe. 
The Pinnacle did not quite reach the sky, 
but it came nearer to it, as its memory 
holds, than Diablo or Tamalpais. 

Into the wild, lonesome patches of wind- 
fall and fallow we disappeared. The briers 
reached above our heads, and their gray- 
green thorns found the very spot where our 
tanned legs left our short pants. There 
were paths in and about the ebony black 
logs that the cows had followed since the 
great fire when grandfather had singed his 
hair close to his head in a vain fight to save 
his buckwheat in the " back lot." They 
were mysterious, winding paths, matted 



150 ^s Talked m the Sanctum 

deep with ash-gray leaves, and they led 
down toward the sugar-bush. When our 
pails were full, — and it was always a sur- 
prise how they got so, — we would follow 
the paths. Sometimes I was De Soto, or 
again Jack was Hawk Eye. " Hist ! '* — 
Hawk Eye would pause in his tracks with 
head lowered and finger raised. A par- 
tridge was drumming on a log : " It is a 
vile Huron ! Look to your priming." 

Among the resinous needles under a 
blasted pine we ate our noon-day lunch. 
The shadow lay close to the foot of the 
pine, so we knew it was time. As we 
munched the thick slices of salt-rising bread 
heavily crusted with shaven maple-sugar, 
we built castles in Spain — castles of which 
we were never to possess the title-deeds, but 
castles that were filled with hopes and aspira- 
tions that had their own silent influence in 
shaping our young lives. A gray squirrel ran 
down the limb of a white birch and marked 
with bright, greedy eyes the spot where each 
crumb fell. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 151 

"When I get to be a man," said Jack, 
as he softly answered the call of a catbird. 

Such was our dreaming. The world has 
been the loser because of the impossibility 
of his not being able to fulfil that day- 
dream. Somehow I always picture him as 
he would be, and not as he is. It is the 
holiday — free from care or thought— that 
brings out the beauty and best in man. 

So the short autumn day passed. The 
hot sun overhead only made itself known 
by a few meshlike streamers that reached 
the leaves at our feet. Then, as it lost 
itself below the Pinnacle far down the valley 
of the Cryder, we followed the lengthening 
shadows along the mountain side, driving 
the cows with us as we went. Our shrill, 
happy "Whey, Boss," and " Coe, Boss," 
woke the echoes across the pastures m the 
darkening " drafts " beyond. 

The Parson. — '' I feel that I am equal to 
as many holidays as the law permits ; but 



152 As Talked in the Sanctum 

as a public man I am not allowed to spend 
them as I choose. I am willing to have 
the Fourth of July set apart as a distinct 
political holiday, — with harangues, powder, 
and brass bands ; with Union League and 
Iroquois Club banquets at night; with noise 
and fireworks, — but I do object to having 
every other legal holiday devoted to the 
same object. Why not hold Washington's 
Birthday sacred to his memory ? Make it 
the school children's holiday, and for once 
put aside all political antagonisms and class 
wars. Washington was neither a Repub- 
lican, Democrat, nor Populist ; he did not 
belong to the A. P. A.'s or the Y. M. I.'s. 
He stands as the greatest moral memory in 
the republic, the conscience of the American 
people. If we are to have parades, let them 
be devoid of "Little Red Schoolhouses" 
and rotten egg throwing. Let them be 
sweet, quiet reminders of the noble Father 
of the whole country." 

The Office Boy had been listening. He 



As Talked in the Sanctum 153 

took off his spectacles and dusted them 
carefully. 

The Office Boy. — " Please, sir, my cousin 
is visiting me from San Luis. May I have 
a holiday to-morrow ? We want to go to a 
picnic in the redwoods at Mill Valley.** 

The Office Boy's petition was timely, and 
it was granted without a dissenting voice. 

The Office Boy, — " Proof! " 



XIII 

THERE are certain pat sayings — axioms 
if you please — that are forever staring 
one in the face, meeting you at every cross- 
road, looming up like a pillar of fire by 
night and a pillar of cloud by day. They 
are sanctified by age — so very, very hoary 
that their white hairs command your rever- 
ence outwardly, even while your whole mind 
and soul revolts. Only personal experience 
will convince the scoffer of their honesty. 
The Sanctum, from a purely worldly point 
of view, is not a success. It does not con- 
tain a rich member. So when one of the 
directors or stockholders in the Company 
— that is, of the Publishing Company — 
solemnly assures us that riches do not bring 
happiness, we listen respectfully and as re- 
spectfully doubt him. We are like the 
154 



^s Talked in the Sanctum 155 

Scotchman — I am not sure but I have 
used this simile before — who was willing 
to be convinced, but would like to see the 
man that could convince him. 

If a man cannot be happy with the means 
to supply every bodily, moral, and mental 
want then, we maintain, there is something 
wrong with the man. 

There was a romantic little story running 
through the press that Mr. Huntington 
said, as his palatial private car drew up to 
the charming station at Santa Rosa, — "I 
would be willing to give up all my millions 
and be a brakeman on one of my own 
freight trains, if I could have my youth and 
eat my lunch from my tin pail on the shady 
side of this little depot, and watch the red- 
cheeked, sunny-haired maidens of Santa 
Rosa come out, day after day, to see the 
trains pull in.'* 

We all have these fugitive wishes — they 
are idyllic and very creditable, but they are 
foolish. It is one thing to be a handsome. 



156 As Talked in the Sa7tctum 

strong young brakemen, with a good diges- 
tion, among a bevy of pretty girls, and 
quite another thing to be a brakeman, old 
and crippled from long service. 

No doubt the railroad president looks 
back with pleasure mingled with regret on 
the days when he was a brakeman, as Lin- 
coln, surrounded with all the cares and 
anxieties of a great civil war, may have 
longed with a genuine longing for the Httle 
country law office in the quiet Illinois town. 

It is to be deplored that none of us have 
ever had actual experience with riches. We 
all have our day-dreams, even now, of v/hat 
we would do in case we were Hunting- 
ton, Gould, or Vanderbilt ; how we would 
make ourselves happy in making others 
happy ; and we are in a continual state of 
surprise that our rich friends do not take 
kindly to our crafty suggestions. It is so 
easy for one of them to write his check and 
make so many people happy, and at the 
same time do so much good, that we are 



As Talked in the Sanctum 157 

amazed that he does not do it. It is use- 
less to specify here our wishes ; but if any 
of our wealthy readers are in want of our 
advice, it is as free as water. 

A philosopher is simply a person who 
observes, draws conclusions, and puts his 
conclusions down in intelligent form. The 
Parson and the Contributor are not young, 
their minds are stored with more than a half 
century of experiences, but if you listen to 
their genial Sanctum talk day after day, the 
following thought takes shape : — 

How years of v/ork and struggle and 
great events are forgotten, and certain mo- 
ments and days, that seem of no significance 
or importance, cling like life itself to the 
memory. A commonplace saying, an ordi- 
nary action, or a trivial happening remains, 
when the memory of things, seemingly of 
the greatest moment, fades away. 

The Parson never talks of his daring 
charge at Antietam, or of the time he 
perilled his life to rescue a boat load of 



158 As Talked in the Sanctum 

picnickers in Raccoon Straits — even an 
old comrade*s praise does not seem to spur 
his memory. A campfire story or a boy- 
hood prank remains as vivid in his mind 
as the day when it took place. 

Here is the opportunity for the philoso- 
pher. He asks himself the why of it all. 
It is a universal experience. Then there 
must be a reason. Was the campfire story 
or the boyhood prank a turning-point in the 
Parson's career ? Unknown to him, did it 
have some great and lasting influence on his 
life ? Do we not have crises in our lives 
that we do not recognize ? 

** There is a tide in the affairs of men ; " 

will the sage please point out the hour of 
high tide ? 

Shakspere was no doubt a philosopher, 
but he left no chart whereby you or I can 
recognize these supreme moments. Conse- 
quently, as an amateur philosopher, I am 
inclined to assert that there is something 
within us that recognizes and treasures the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 159 

memory of the tide-times of our life, even 
when our reason and senses pass them by. 
We entertain many an angel unawares, as 
we refuse bread to many a deserving beggar. 

The Typewriter, — " There is a party out 
here that will not leave until he sees the 
Editor. He has discontinued his subscrip- 
tion and has his reasons for so doing written 
out. He wishes to read them to some one 
in authority." 

The Reader, — " Poetry or prose ? " 

The Ex-Subscriber, — " Excuse me, gentle- 
men, for intruding on your valuable time 
and interrupting your puerile drivel, but I 
want you to understand that I am one of 
the original subscribers to this magazine. 
I am no chicken, if my hair is long. You 
may have seen my letters signed ' Veritas ' 
in the Guinda Populist ? " 

The Reader respectfully removed his hat. 

The Ex-Subscriber, — "Do you follow me? 
Good ! Now what I pick on is this. You 
don't abuse the railroad. You say noth- 



i6o As Talked hi the Sanctum 

ing. You go along as though it was a great 
and good institution, like the corner grocery 
and the primary. You take no part in such 
burning questions of the day as whether the 
Examiner did or did not sell its protection 
for one thousand dollars a month. What 
we want up in the country is more vim, 
and backbone, and personalities. Show up 
the iniquities of the rich, and so help the 
poor. We can live longer and enjoy better 
health if we know that the predatory rich 
are not sleeping comfortably between their 
two feather ticks. Down with the railroads ! 
Why, sir ! last Christmas they refused me a 
pass back to my childhood home in Vermont. 
To me, who came to this country before rail- 
roads were thought of! The railroad is a 
tyrant, and California is the last of the slave 
States. Do you hear me ? Take my name 
off your books. I am one of the people." 

The Manager, — " Certainly. There is 
four years due — will you pay now ? " 

The Ex-Subscriber.—'' V^Y^' Never! Col- 



As Talked in the Sanctum i6i 

lect it of Huntington and Crocker. You 
juggernaut ! " 

The Manager, — "Thanks. We prefer 
to collect it from your estate after you have 
talked yourself to death.'* 

The Contributor. — "I have long wanted 
to meet 'Veritas.' Since my boyhood days 
I have read his scholarly essays on the ' Want 
of a New Sewer on M Street/ and ' An Ap- 
peal to the Self-respecting Citizens of the 
Eighth Ward.' He is catholic in his choice 
of mediums. The Whitesville News and 
the New York Tribune are honored alike 
with his brilliant pyrotechnics. His com- 
munications to the editor bristle with quota- 
tions from the orators and poets of the 
Fourth Reader. With Wendell Phillips he 
exclaims, 'Revolutions are not made; they 
come,' and with Daniel Webster, ' Let our 
object be our country, our whole country, 
and nothing but our country.' He is first 
cousin to Old Subscriber, Taxpayer, Old 
Settler, Pioneer, '49-er, and Vox Populi. 



1 62 As Talked in the Sanctum 

He is a brother of Pro Bono Publico. His 
rhetoric is as picturesque as his grammar is 
original. He fears neither libel suits nor 
public opinion. From the sunny side of 
the corner grocery he formulates State con- 
stitutions and regulates family jars. ' Veritas * 
is the friend of the poor, excepting his own, 
and the advocate of the other people^s down- 
trodden. He is as old as the printing-press 
and as fresh as a spring poem. To have 
met a modest, self-confessed ' Veritas ' is 
better than to have been received by the 
Queen. Would that the Sanctum group 
could make him one of them." 

The Manager. — "I have often thought I 
would take up philosophy as a profession, 
but I never could make a beginning. Now 
there was the time the Contributor, Tim 
O'Brien, and myself salted that little 
woman's mine at Smartsville. Our hearts 
were all in the right place, but our brains 
were in a bog. The Parson was saying that 



As Talked in the Sanctum 163 

no good action was ever done that some one 
was not the better for it. But, whoever 
received the benefit in this case, I know that 
the Contributor suffered, for the laugh the 
boys had on him beat him for judge in 
Stanislaus County." 

The Artist. — "But he got the title of 
Judge, if he did lose the office." 

The Manager, — " Talk about trivial things 
being impressed on your memory. I can 
see it all as though it happened but yester- 
day, while I cannot even remember the fee 
I paid the minister that married me. One 
hot summer day, back in the fifties, a big, 
strapping fellow, with as dainty a bit of a 
wife as a man ever clapped eyes on, clam- 
bered out of the old Marysville coach at 
Smartsville and moved into a little cabin 
over at the foot of the hill. The very next 
morning we saw her sitting in her cabin door 
with her big blue eyes swimming with tears. 
Some of the boys thought the husband had 
been beating her, and were for divorcing 



164 As Talked in the Sanctum 

them then and there. We talked it over all 
the forenoon, and in the afternoon the 
little woman walked down to the store and 
asked the storekeeper where she could stake 
a claim. She was sobbing as if her poor 
heart would break as she told him her hus- 
band had been taken with rheumatism and 
couldn't move, and that they didn't have 
any money. She thought she could do a 
little mining alone if she just had a show. 
We all tried to give her a little dust, but her 
eyes snapped so they dried up her tears, 
when she thanked us and said she was no 
beggar, but could work for a living. 

" She walked straight out of there and over 
to the side hill and staked out a claim on 
a piece of ground that was as barren as 
the top of Ararat. A man couldn't have 
found color there if he had gone clean 
through to China, but she shovelled away 
with her soft little hands that blistered 
almost as soon as she touched the handle, 
and then cooled them in the water while she 



As Talked in the Sanctum 165 

washed the dirt. Tim and the rest of us 
felt mighty sorry for the. delicate little crea- 
ture, working away so bravely to support 
herself and her sick husband ; so — it was 
the Contributor who thought it all out — 
we slipped around that night and salted her 
claim pretty heavy. The next morning we 
all sat in front of the saloon and watched her 
work out her first pan of dust. It netted 
somewhere about two hundred dollars in 
coarse gold, and she felt so good that she 
fell right down on her knees and thanked 
the good Lord. We all kind of choked and 
wiped our eyes, and made a bee line for the 
bar. The little woman was so happy and 
worked away so cheerily all that day that 
the boys couldn't help giving her claim 
another salting. 

" The husband, a nice, patient kind of a 
chap, kept sick for weeks, his noble little 
wife kept digging and working away, and 
the Contributor and the rest of us kept salt- 
ing her claim, for we couldn't bear to think 



1 66 As Talked in the Sanctum 

of her disappointment if we should let it 
peter out. Our own claims weren't paying 
any too well, the water was slow, and what 
with standing around and watching her all 
day, we made so little that it wasn't very 
long before she had pretty nearly all the dust 
in camp. Finally, when she found her claim 
wasn't paying and her husband was better, 
she decided to take her departure. We were 
all mighty sorry to see her go ; for she was 
a bright, cheery little creature, and as pretty 
as a picture. The sight of her made us all 
kind of religious, and the Contributor had 
collected somewhere in the neighborhood of 
two hundred dollars for a church. But with 
her went our yearning after a parson, and by 
a standing vote we made her a present of the 
whole collection. During the election it was 
told that the Contributor surreptitiously 
added his diamond stud." 

The Contributor, — " Regarding which my 
memory fails me." 

The Manager, — " Our divinity*s husband 



As Talked in the Sanctum 167 

took sick again at Rough and Ready, and 
the boys there salted her claim until she 
broke the camp. He took sick again at 
Boston Ravine, and then over again at Selby 
Flat, and I think he carried that rheumatism 
into every camp in the State — and all the 
gold dust out ! '* 

The Contributor, — "Isn't it about time 
for the proof ? " 

The Office Boy. — ''Yxooir 



XIV 

FRANCOIS VILLON^S conceited as- 
sertion, that "good talkers are only 
found in Paris," may be true. Still it has 
been remarked that certain members of the 
Sanctum are more than mediocre conversa- 
tionalists, — ornaments to the circle, — men 
of mark. They, the talkers, have absorbed 
Vv^hatever meed of praise comes sanctum- 
ward. If the Parson and the Contributor 
are pointed out on the street and quoted in 
the newspapers, invited to banquets, asked to 
read papers before learned societies, we feel 
it is only their due. Instead of showing 
jealousy, we are secretly elated at their favor. 
Every member of the circle fills his own 
modest niche. The Editor, the Poet, the 
Reader, know that they are just as accom- 
plished listeners as the Parson is an accom- 

168 



As Talked in the Sanctum 169 

plished talker. The good listener does not 
hold the exalted place in polite society that 
the good talker does ; but, surely, he is quite 
as important. A man, we have all agreed, 
is never a perfect success as a talker unless 
he be a listener as well. " Not to listen 
is not merely a want of politeness: it is a 
mark of disrespect." 

The Contributor had been airing his opin- 
ions on the Cuban question. The Reviewer 
had an idea, and he struggled to clothe it in 
imposing verbiage. The Contributor gazed 
absently out of the great south window 
toward the weather signals on the Mills 
Building. He may have understood before- 
hand what the Reviewer was trying to ex- 
press, or he may have had the faculty of 
listening while thinking of what he meant to 
reply, but it was not long before the Reviewer 
began to stutter and stumble. He closed 
abruptly in the middle of a sentence, his 
ideas disconcerted and his vanity wounded. 
The Contributor, without noticing either the 



lyo As Talked in the Sanctum 

unfinished argument or the broken, feeble 
finale, went on with the thread of his ha- 
rangue as though the Reviewer had not 
spoken. 

The Contributor's oblivious rudeness and 
the Reviewer's poorly concealed annoyance 
sent a smile around the circle. 

The Artist. — "There is no question but 
that our Contributor is an accomplished 
monologist. Euripides has described him, 
* He is a talker and needs no questioning 
before he speaks.' We all admire the ease 
and agility with which he skips from the 
cause of the downtrodden Cubans to Reid's 
presidential chances. At the same time he 
is equally interesting on cathode ray, and the 
Sinai Gospels. Yet, if I may be allowed to 
criticise at the same moment, I would say 
that he shares with all egotists their radi- 
cal defect — polite inattention to the conver- 
sation of their peers. I want to have this 
matter out once for all with the Contributor, 
for I have long been a silent suflferer from 



As Talked in the Sanctmn 171 

his courteous condescension. It should not 
be necessary for me always to call him to 
earth with a question. He carries his habit 
too far. When he talks, I do more than 
merely lend him a semiconscious ear, I give 
him freely both my ears and my eyes. I am 
wilHng to put up with this form of imperti- 
nence from my Senator, my creditor, or the 
man of whom I am to ask a favor ; but from 
the circle — never! I can imagine only one 
thing more stupid than a dinner party of 
brilliant monologists, — a dinner party of 
listeners only. As Balzac says, * Nothing 
brings more profit in the commerce of society 
than the small change of attention.' " 

The Contributor, — "I do not think I can 
be accused of being inattentive to the Artist's 
uncalled-for philippic. I am too old to 
change my bad habits, and too proud to be 
held up as a horrible example. I am willing, 
however, modestly to confess that for some 
time I have been aware that I am a better 
talker than listener. If I am a poor listener, 



172 As Talked in the Sanctum 

it is because I have never received proper 
encouragement in my youth. ' The Art of 
Conversation/ ' How to Become a Conver- 
sationalist/ are familiar titles in every library. 
The Conversationalist is patted on the back 
in prose and in verse. If for a moment he 
gives up his prerogative of being the central 
figure, he sinks to the dead level of a bored 
listener to some halting speaker*s threadbare 
platitudes." 

The Poet, — " I will vouch for the glorifi- 
cation of the talker in poetry, — 

*< * Form'd by thy converse happily to steer 
From grave to gay, from lively to severe, 

advised Pope, and Milton testifies, — 

" *With thee conversing I forget all time.' " 

The Artist, — " Still I wish one might say 
of the Contributor as Sydney Smith said of 
Macaulay, ' He has occasional flashes of 
silence, that make his conversation perfectly 
delightful.' " 

The Typewriter. — " There is a gentleman 



As Talked in the Sanctmn 173 

out here that would like to have a short con- 
versazione with the Artist. He complains 
that he had a story in the March number, 
and that the Artist put flowing Dundrearies 
on his clean-shaven hero." 

The Reader. — "No doubt the whiskers 
had plenty of time to grow while the tale was 
awaiting publication." 

The F arson, — "It seems to me that a read- 
able article might be written on the genesis 
of a good listener. Success in life, nine times 
out of ten, makes a good talker. The suc- 
cessful man is seldom a listener. The 
listener is the courtier; for the poor man 
can win more by intelligent attention than 
by the brilliancy of his conversation. The 
unsuccessful man who talks well is put down 
as unpractical, and dismissed with a shrug 
of the shoulders. His mistake is that he as- 
sumes that people will listen to ideas without 
a mental inventory of the speaker. The 
rich man should be respectfully listened to 
for what he is and not for what he says. 



174 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

Remember this, and many things will be 
forgiven you, even your failures in life." 

The Contributor. — " The Parson reminds 
me of the man who for two hours talked 
steadily to a deaf man on the Silver Question, 
and left, remarking that he, the deaf man, 
was the most entertaining conversationahst 
he ever met." 

The Reader, — "I have run across the 
titles of a lot of curious old books of 
Cromwell's time. They rival our modern 
appellations of ' The Tinted Venus,' ' The 
Gilded Sin,' and ' The Heavenly Twins.* 
Listen : * The Christian Sodality ; or. Catho- 
lic Hive of Bees, sucking the Honey of the 
Churches' Prayer from the Blossoms of the 
World of God, Blowne out of the Epistles 
and Gospels of the Divine Service through- 
out the Yeare, collected by the Puny Bee 
of All the Hive, not worthy to be named 
otherwise than by these Elements of his 
Name, F. P.' * ^ Fan to drive away Flies : 



As Talked in the Sanctum 175 

a Theological Treatise on Purgatory.' ^ A 
Most Delectable Sweet Perfumed Nosegay for 
God's Saints to Smell at.' ^A Reaping- 
hook^ well tempered, for the Stubborn Ears 
of the coming Crop ; or, Biscuit baked in 
the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved 
for the Chickens of the Church, the 
Sparrows of the Spirit, and the Sv/eet 
Swallows of Salvation.' * ^gg^ of Charity^ 
layed by the Chickens of the Covenant, 
and boiled with the Water of Divine 
Love. Take Ye and Eat.' ' Hooks and 
Eyes for Believers' Breeches' * High-heeled 
Shoes for Dwarfs in Holiness.' * The Spir- 
itual Mustard Pot, to make the Soul sneeze 
with Devotion.' " 

The Artist. — " No doubt the publica- 
tions of the aboriginal Salvation Army." 

The Reader. — "As I went through a list 
of these archaic book captions, the thought 
came to me that I might bring some fame 
to the circle by indicting a bibelot on 
*The Fashion in Book Titles, — How They 



176 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Change/ There is a fashion in the nam- 
ing of new books, that is, novels. In 
Thackeray, Dickens, and Levers's day the 
name of the hero generally gave his name 
to the volume. Fenimore Cooper, Victor 
Hugo, Dumas, and Walter Scott affected 
descriptive titles, while Charles Reade and 
Wilkie ColUns went in for mystery. To- 
day, the title is more often chosen without 
regard to anything between covers, like 
Artemus Ward's celebrated lecture on ' The 
Babes in the Wood,* — for example, ' Ships 
that Pass in the Night,* — or, for pure sensa- 
tionalism, note ' An Amazing Marriage,* ' A 
Sawdust Doll,' 'Two Women and a Fool,* 
' Three Men in a Boat.' However, I only 
intend to outline and patent my idea now. 
Later — who can tell? — it may appear in 
sweet-smelling vellum, heralded by a home- 
for-the-feeble-minded poster by Beardsley. 
It is thus great thoughts have their birth.** 

" It is written,** asserted the Contributor, 



As Talked in the Sanctum 177 

with a majestic wave of the hand, " that 
Cuba shall be free. Fashions in clothes 
change, so they must in governments. The 
powdered wig, knee breeches, and high 
red-heeled shoes have gone the way of the 
divine right of kings. Debased, broken- 
spirited servitude is less noisy than ram- 
pant, hot-headed liberty; but as for me I 
prefer my champagne in my glass to having 
it well corked and secured in bottles. It 
may spoil the table linen at first, but it will 
soon settle and be fit to drink. The 
Cubans have served their apprenticeship. 
Four hundred years of unrequited labor 
pays any debt that may be owing to their 
progenitors. It is not for us to criticise 
their nationality or color. They are what 
their protecting Mother Spain has made 
them. Their excesses in the struggle for 
liberty are nothing in comparison to the 
outrages of the chivalrous officers of the 
land of Ferdinand and Isabella. I want to 
see Cuba free only because I believe it is 



1 78 As Talked in the Sanctum 

right that she should be. I do not beheve 
that any power on earth has the legal or 
moral right to fasten on the necks of a mill- 
ion and a half of human beings the galling 
yoke of a debt that is monstrous in its size 
and in its future consequences. Spain is 
fighting, not because she really cares to hold 
Cuba, but because she wants to compel her 
to pay to her creditors three hundred mill- 
ion dollars — a sum of money ten times the 
size of the debt that the great State of Vir- 
ginia has admitted, time and again, that she 
was absolutely unable to meet. Spain has 
sent to Cuba within a year one hundred and 
forty thousand soldiers. Forty thousand of 
them rot in Cuban soil. She is spending 
one million dollars a day. She is cooped 
up in the city of Havana, and yet she re- 
fuses to acknowledge that there is a war 
going on on the island. Foreign corre- 
spondents are refused passes to the front; 
they are not permitted on pain of death to 
visit the insurgents* camp; and yet the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 179 

official despatches report brilliant Spanish 
victories, and claim that the rebels are but 
a handful of bandits. If Captain-General 
Weyler is such a genius and his troops so 
invincible, it is natural that he should want 
all the world to know it. If there is no 
war in Cuba and the Spanish troops are so 
humane in their treatment of old men and 
women, why then are the representatives 
of our great journals forbidden to leave 
Havana? If all these things are true, Spain 
has nothing to fear from American recogni- 
tion of the so-called belligerents. It is the 
duty of every civilized power to uphold 
civilization. Because England was deaf to 
the cries of fifty thousand dying Armenians 
is no reason why America should close her 
ears and eyes to Spanish atrocities in this 
hemisphere. I should not care if three- 
fourths of the Cuban army were blacks in- 
stead of one-fourth. I would rather see 
them free and murdering one another than 
being murdered by the most Christian king- 



i8o ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

dom of Spain. One or two generations 
would teach them the great lessons of free- 
dom. Let this country formally recognize 
Cuba, and the world will recognize Spain's 
bankruptcy. It is un-American to wait 
longer." 

The Office Boy, — " Proof! " 



XV 

1WAS reading the life of one of the great 
ones of the earth, long since gone before. 
It was a simple, honest biography, one that 
would not do its subject or its " Boswell " 
any serious harm. I would not mention it 
here had 1 not been forced to admire, in 
spite of a wholly uncalled-for prejudice, the 
marked, almost brilliant, cleverness displayed 
in discovering a relationship between the 
triumphs of manhood and certain youthful 
characteristics or idiosyncrasies. 

It was noted that in this lawyer-politi- 
cian's youth he successfully organized a 
boycott on the aged taffy-man who sold 
sundry home-made sweets on the sunny 
side of the village court house, who, profit- 
ing by an uncontested monopoly, charged a 
cent here and there in excess of the prices 
that prevailed during the past generation. 

i8i 



1 82 As Talked in the Sanctum 

It was also a matter of record that in the 
subject's tenth year he "floored" the vil- 
lage pettifogger in a debate at the district 
schoolhouse on the question — ^^ Resolved, 
that city life is preferable to country life," 
and there are numerous instances that go 
to show that he was of an accumulative turn 
of mind. 

The biographer eagerly deduces the fact 
that his hero was simply among men what 
he had been among boys — a leader. His 
mind contained a cog here and there that 
the ordinary mind lacked. He arrived at 
conclusions before his fellows had settled 
on premises. In politics and trade, as in 
chess and fencing, he saw his moves far 
ahead, and while others were experimenting, 
he was simply following out a clearly fore- 
seen policy. I became very much interested 
in this biographical analysis, and it led to a 
discussion one day in the Sanctum. 

I do not know that anything worth record- 
ing was said, but some ideas were put into 



As Talked in the Sanctum 183 

words that had previously lived vaguely in 
the nebula of uncollected thoughts. One 
reason why the writer or the orator achieves 
fame for erudition is, that in his constant 
delving for something new to write about 
or to declaim, he unearths, from the mental 
chaos of his brain-tunnels, naked truths that 
only need a new dress for every one to 
instantly recognize familiar " saws " in un- 
familiar garbs. No one is more surprised 
at what a drag-net will bring to light in the 
human mind than the owner of the mind 
himself. 

The Contributor has a pretty little theory, 
and I think a harmless one, that the Creator 
is ever busy making minds for earthly bodies. 
The minds are mathematical mechanisms ; 
they are not all equal in workmanship or 
finish. Some are hurriedly thrown together, 
others only half completed, but once in a 
generation a mind perfect in certain lines 
is created, and then history makes note of 
a Napoleon, a Newton, an Edison. The 



184 As Talked in the Sanctum 

theory is graceful, but it hardly calls for 
respect, although the Contributor fortifies 
it forcibly with examples that prove he has 
given the matter some thought. 

He says Stradivarius and Guarnerius 
made one perfect violin to ten mediocre 
ones, that the steel workers of Damascus 
turned out thousands of faulty swords to a 
score of imperishable ones ; but, to the Sanc- 
tum, all these arguments, more or less inter- 
esting, proved quite a different thing from 
what they were intended, namely, that the 
Contributor would have made an excellent 
lawyer. So one's thoughts fly, in spite of 
all, from the general to the particular, and 
the Artist irrelevantly inquired if the talker 
believed in Woman's Suffrage. The Con- 
tributor ignored the interrogation, and it 
was noted that the Artist had been read- 
ing a four-column brevier letter in the Call^ 
signed by Susan B. Anthony. He turned to 
the Parson. 

The Parson, — "I will believe in Woman's 



As Talked in the Sanctum 185 

Suffrage and will vote for it when the Par- 
soness asks it. I have never denied her 
anything that it was possible for me to 
grant, but until she request it, I do not feel 
inclined to do for Miss Anthony or Miss 
Shaw what might not please my home. 
When the ladies of this country ask their 
husbands to share with them the ballot. 
Woman's Suffrage will be possible ; but, 
until that time, no self-respecting husband 
and father will raise a finger to enhance the 
notoriety of a bevy of professional agi- 
tators." 

The Reviewer, — "Not being a benedict, 
I, too, will take my marching orders from 
the Parson's generalissimo." 

Granting that there was some reason in 
the biographer's argument that the acts of 
our adolescence foreshadow the career of 
our mature manhood, I am curious to know 
how he would account for and apply to 
my own after life my boyhood passion for 



1 86 As Talked in the Sanctum 

making " scrap-books." If It is a sign that I 
possess the accumulating or saving instinct, 
I would answer that these are the only things 
I ever accumulated. If it shows that I was 
destined for any particular profession, I would 
ask, why, then, do not fifty per cent of those 
who have the scrap-book mania choose the 
same profession ? 

However, it never struck me as curious 
until one day, not long ago, I discovered that 
I had preserved these old books. Now I 
wonder at them ; I have not opened them 
for years. Their pot-pourri of gleanings 
for the curious, curiosities of literature, 
words, facts and phrases, familiar quota- 
tions, and melange of excerpts have done 
me no conscious good, and yet I have pre- 
served them. The largest of these literary 
graveyards I opened. It is an old ''Agri- 
cultural Report,'* and emits a damp, aged 
odor. It is as full of memories as it is 
of gleanings. The opening poem reads as 
follows: — 



As Talked in the Sanctum 187 

•* Mary had a little jam 

She locked it up to grow ; 
And everywhere that Mary went 
The key was sure to go. 

** She lost it in the grass one day 
While fleeing from a cow ; 
Her brother Johnny picked it up — 
He is an angel now." 

But as if to testify that I was not des- 
tined to be a poet of passion, the follow- 
ing page contains an editorial from the New 
York Sun on the " Distracted Condition of 
France," followed by a tabulation of " The 
Nation's Dead." Then comes an article 
that purports to have appeared in a London 
paper at the time James G. Blaine visited 
England. It begins : — 

" The Rt. Hon. James G. Blaine and wife have 
just arrived in this city. Mr. Blaine is at present 
governor-general of Maine, a province on the 
southwestern coast of Lake Mississippi. . . . Mr. 
Blaine is a first cousin of the Rt. Hon. William 
F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and is 
expected to call upon him to-morrow to formu-^ 



1 88 As Talked in the Sanctum 

late governmental plans for action on the reassem- 
bling of the American Senate, Mr. Cody being a 
Senator from the province of Key West. . . . 
Mr. Blaine's military title is major-general. He 
gained it by gallant action on the field at Look- 
out Mountain, where he commanded the Second 
Chicago Infantry under General Beauregard, etc." 

This struck me as eminently funny at the 
time. I had then never been in England or 
lived among English people. I reread and 
copied the extract; it strikes me as sadly 
true, that is, the spirit of it. I was discuss- 
ing American and English magazines with 
an Englishwoman of whose opinion on 
matters literary I have the greatest respect. 
In a general way I was boasting of the supe- 
riority of American magazines. " Yes," she 
assented, in that imperturbable, politely pat- 
ronizing way that has become second nature 
to our English cousins, " there is no doubt but 
that your Atlantic^ Overland^ and North Amer- 
ican are creditable, but how can you compare 
them to our Harper s and Century ^ Neither 



As Talked in the Sanctum 189 

would she believe me when I assured her 
that her favorites were the very American 
magazines of which I was so proud, although 
I was sorry to admit that one of them, like 
many good Americans, affected English- 
made clothes as soon as it touched English 
soil. The EngHsh know almost absolutely 
nothing of our geography. One of our 
California girls, who had spent three years 
in a New York boarding-school, was stay- 
ing with friends in London before returning 
to her native State. 

" Where do you live ? " asked a titled 
caller. 

" California," she replied. 

" Ah, and went to school in New York. 
Did you go home every night ? " 

The Englishwoman knows those parts of 
our great country where her relatives are on 
a ranch, and the Englishman those sections 
where his surplus capital is invested. They 
talk of Johannesburg, Rajputana, Ottawa, 
and Penang as though they were but a 



I go As Talked in the Sanctum 

step from London Bridge, but St. Louis, 
San Francisco, Buenos Ayres, and Havana 
are somewhere in that great ^undiscovered 
" States," and that is enough. 

" I have a friend in the States," remarked 
an Englishwoman, who was making poHte 
conversation while we were waiting for the 
dining-room doors to open. " Possibly 
you have met him. He lives in — let me 
think, oh, yes, how stupid, Rio de Janeiro." 

English geographies and English histories 
are to blame for this want of neighboring 
knowledge of our affairs. 

I could not help reminding an English 
governor who was dilating on Britain's prow- 
ess that the " States " had twice come off 
fairly well in wars with his great nation. 

" Twice," he echoed, while a genuine knot 
of amazement grew between his quiet blue 
eyes. *^ Oh, ah — you refer to your Revo- 
lution and — yes, I fancy that Chesapeake 
affair." 

I found out later that the " Chesapeake " 



As Talked in the Sanctum 191 

affair, an English naval victory, was all his 
school history had taught his nation of the 
War of 1812. 

Since the death of that charming fellow 
and delightful companion, who was child- 
hood's poet-laureate — Eugene Field — the 
story of his celebrated encounter with the 
famous author of " Robert Elsmere " at a 
dinner party in London has become the 
property of the newspapers. When it was 
related to me by one who heard it, it was 
known only to the " Saints and Sinners." 
Field was placed next to Mrs. Humphry 
Ward, who was the bright, particular star of 
the evening. She ignored the modest Ameri- 
can until the fifth course ; then, for the sake of 
making a show of conversation, she turned to 
him with the stereotyped English inquiry: — 

"Mister — Mister — " 

" Field," interpolated her auditor. 

"Pardon, Mister Field of Chicago, eh? 
Do you know this Doctor Cronin (of Clan- 
Na-Gael fame) ? " 



192 As Talked in the Sanctum 

" Certainly, madam," replied Field, with 
the most intelligent expression he could 
assume, " we live in adjoining trees." 

But to return to the scrap-book. I find 
that I have saved some one's estimate of 
the difference between the English poets. 

" Chaucer describes men and things as 
they are ; Shakspere, as they would be under 
the circumstances supposed ; Spenser, as we 
would wish them to be ; Milton, as they 
ought to be ; Byron, as they ought not to 
be ; and Shelley, as they never can be." 

I often wonder if any one else has ever 
thought it worth while to preserve the same 
items that I have. If so, we are affinities. 

These earlier scrap-books are severely 
impersonal. They were made up when the 
compiler's life had not begun to interest 
himself and prior to that interesting period 
when he entered upon the record of his own 
comings and goings. At this date it is 
impossible to decide what great merit cer- 
tain receipts of how to make guava jelly 



As Talked in the Sanctum 193 

held for me. I doubt if I had a clear idea 
of what a guava was. I know I could never 
have hoped to see one. Neither can I 
imagine why I preserved an obituary notice 
of one G. Henry Snell. It must have been 
an example of style, for I am sure I never 
knew any one of the name. However, it 
is not my intention to hold this old book 
up to scorn. Scrap-books will continue to 
grow and flourish as long as papers are 
published and good paste can be made from 
a handful of wheat flour and a cup of cold 
water. 

The Office Boy, — " Proof ! " 



XVI 

IN reporting the Parson's lecture before 
"the Young Men's Self-culture Club," 
one of the morning papers charged him with 
being a transcendentalist. How a beardless 
reporter had discovered such a defect in the 
good man's armor, when we of the Sanctum 
had known him for generations without ever 
detecting it, set us to thinking. Like the 
fish woman whom Curran called "an isos- 
celes triangle," we were at first carried off 
our feet. In these decadent times it is not 
polite to charge a public man in print with 
being an ass, so such specious terms as an 
" isosceles triangle " and a " transcenden- 
talist " have become common. 

The Contributor was mad. He arose to 
defend his absent colleague's character. 

The Contributor, — "It is a disgrace that 
there is no protection for a man's good 
194 



As Talked in the Sanctum 195 

name. The Parson a trans — trans — oh, 
well, whatever you call It ! It is a disgrace ! 
He is no more a transcen — thing-a-me- 
bob — than I am, and the Lord knows I 
never let one of my notes go to protest. 
What's a trans — what do you call it — 
anyway ? " 

The Reader. — "One who believes in 
transcendentalism." 

The Contributor. — " That's it. Now, 
who dares to defame our Parson } Er — 
er — What in the name of common sense 
is this new ism } " 

The Reader. — " The spiritual cognoscence 
of psychological irrefragabiiity, connected 
with concutient ademption of incolumnient 
spirituality and etherealized contention of 
subsultory concretion." 

The Reader put up his guard as though 
he expected to be struck. The Contribu- 
tor's old face fairly glowed. His chair came 
down on all four legs, and he grasped the 
Reader's upraised hand. 



196 As Talked in the Sanctum 

The Contributor, — "A thousand thanks. 
You have made many things clear to me. 
I once knew a transcendentalist — only we 
called him a fool. He has since gone 
crazy, but alack ! too late, you have discov- 
ered my mistake for me. He lived in New 
York, and he figured out that a post-hole 
for a fence on Broadway cost, as real estate 
sold, one hundred dollars. Up in Allegheny 
County, where he was born, good land was 
worth twenty-five dollars an acre. He con- 
ceived the idea of digging post-holes in Alle- 
gheny, where they could be had for a song, 
and shipping them to New York, where a 
carload would sell for a small fortune." 

The Reviewer. — "In good Anglo-Saxon, 
then, transcendentalism is two holes in a 
sand-bank ; a storm washes away the sand- 
bank without disturbing the holes." 

The Reader. — "I have always noticed 
that the people who are forever discussing 
these many isms take themselves more 
seriously than does any one else. They 



As Talked in the Sanctum 197 

get hold of a lot of stock words and phrases 
and build up an article around them, which, 
when torn apart and reduced to good, old- 
fashioned United States, contains but one 
single everyday idea. Our dictionaries 
grow year by year in bulk because of the 
thankless tasks the compilers undertake in 
clearing up and making plain a lot of this 
stilted bosh. When I read that some short- 
haired woman is going to lecture on tran- 
scendentalism or empiricism, I wonder how 
big an audience she would draw if she 
advertised to speak on ' The Absurdity of 
Experience,' on the one hand, or ' The 
Value of Experience,' on the other. In 
the case of the Parson, the callow reporter 
no doubt meant to be complimentary, or, at 
the worst, to say that the preacher talked 
over the heads of his audience. There is 
nothing more serious in these weak-minded 
isms than in Curran's isosceles triangle." 

To the average man all this vain striving 



198 As Talked in the Sanctum 

after the " thingness of the here " and " the 
whichness of the where" is supremely laugh- 
able. It is but just one remove from the 
madhouse. A world-renowned theosophist 
dined with us one night. We were all 
" average men and women " at the table 
except himself, and we were as curious as 
children to know what he knew. The Gen- 
eral, who was something of an Oriental 
scholar and had been in charge of the 
British-Palestine Exploration Expedition, 
expressed his polite though undisguised 
astonishment at some of the statements 
made by our guest. When cornered as to 
his authorities, the theosophist at last cited 
cuneiform inscriptions. 

"But surely not from any of the cunei- 
form inscriptions that have been recorded." 
And the old General arose from the table to 
take down some ponderous reports. 

" Oh, no, not from the Persian or Assyrian 
inscriptions." 

" What, then ? " And the old man re- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 199 

placed the tome, his face all alight with the 
thought that the theosophist had discovered 
some unknown people that used the famous 
wedge-shaped characters. 

" From the cuneiform inscriptions of the 
temples of the Aztecs," replied the high priest 
of theosophy, triumphantly. 

There was a stillness of death about the 
table. The General's face was a study, but 
our guest was mighty in the double-riveted 
armor of his own ignorance. 

"Theosophy is all-wise, all-powerful," he 
went on. 

" But is it practical ? " some one timidly 
suggested. " Can it build a Brooklyn Bridge, 
or make known the law of repulsion ? " 

" Practical ? " he sneered. " What are 
the triumphs of the material in the light of 
the fact that we know where we came from 
and where we are going to ? " 

" Nothing," we admitted in one voice. 

" And do you know ? " 

" I do ; but I am one of the elect." 



200 As Talked in the Sanctum 

We did not embarrass him by asking 
vulgar questions, we were fearful he would 
refer us to the cuneiform inscriptions of the 
Esquimaux. 

The other evening the Parson and I heard 
a female adept in theosophy — a Russian 
Countess — lecture on death and what comes 
after. She outlined cleverly enough the 
seven stages through which the soul would 
pass after death. She said that cremation 
was the only humane manner of disposing 
of the earthly body. From the moment the 
body was consumed the astral body was re- 
leased, whereas if ordinary burial took place, 
the soul had to remain until the body was 
decayed. She proved conclusively that a 
man who committed suicide did not deliver 
himself from his troubles. The soul was 
condemned to remain on earth and work 
out its own salvation. It suffered hunger 
and thirst and the real temptations of the 
flesh. It attached itself to weak-minded per- 
sons who became what are styled mediums, 



As Talked m the Sanctum 201 

in order to inhale the aroma of their dinners 
and participate in the essence of their pleas- 
ures. In payment for these privileges it 
aided the medium in his or her table rap- 
pings and chair knockings. Naturally, the 
thought took possession of us that the wan- 
dering, condemned soul showed very bad 
taste in its choice of victims. If they wish 
to smell good dinners, why do they not 
attach themselves to Chauncey Depew or 
one of a dozen bon vivants that we could 
name ? And all the authority our Countess 
could give for her remarkable scheme of 
after death was two cases recorded by W. T. 
Stead in his Review of Reviews of the sen- 
sation of two men coming back to life, one 
of whom was nearly frozen to death and the 
other nearly drovvned. In our minds, the 
only difference between the lecturer and an 
old inmate of a madhouse who labored 
under the agreeable hallucination that she 
was Queen Victoria was, that in one case the 
people did not smile and in the other they did. 



202 As Talked in the Sanctum 

The Reviewer, — "Her logic was not half 
as clever, yet fully as absurd, as the verdict 
of a Mohammedan court of * homicide by 
an intermediate cause/ You remember the 
case of the young man of the Island of Cos 
in the ^gean Sea who was desperately in 
love with a girl of Stanchio, and sought to 
marry her. His proposals were rejected. In 
consequence he took poison. The Turkish 
police arrested the father of the obdurate 
fair one, and tried him for culpable homi- 
cide. * If the accused,' argued they, with 
much gravity, ' had not had a daughter, the 
deceased would not have fallen in love ; con- 
sequently, he would not have been disap- 
pointed ; consequently, he would not have 
swallowed poison ; consequently, he would 
not have died ; but the accused had a 
daughter, the deceased had fallen in love, 
and so on.* Upon all these counts he was 
called upon to pay the price of the young 
man's life ; and this, being fixed at the sum 
of eighty piasters, was accordingly exacted." 



As Talked in the Sanctum 203 

The Occasional Visitor. — "I have noted 
that these clever spirit mediums who can 
make chairs and miscellaneous furniture 
dance a hornpipe, always call in a very 
material drayman when they want to move 
the piano." 

The Contributor, — " That's simple ; the 
spirit was willing but the flesh was weak." 

The Artist, — " However absurd the Coun- 
tess's explanation of the how of a medium's 
powers, it may be true, nevertheless. You 
recollect the Frenchman who asked an Irish 
medium to produce the spirit of Voltaire. 
Voltaire came forth, much to his admirer's 
delight. It was Voltaire complete in every 
detail. The Frenchman began an animated 
conversation in their native tongue. The 
shade did not respond. At last the French- 
man grew exasperated and turned to the 
medium. 

" * Not can ze great Voltaire converse ? * 

" * Of course he can, yez heathin, if ye 
will stop that furrin lingo and talk good 



204 As Talked in the Sanctum 

English. Do yez take him for a frog- 
eater ? ' 

" It occurred to me that the medium was 
rather to be pitied than laughed at. Her 
silent partner, the suicide, according to the 
Countess's theory, had not learned French 
before he took his own life. It was not 
the medium's fault that in the spirit lottery 
she had not drawn a linguist." 

The Poet, — ^' It occurs to me that the 
Sanctum has been housed too long in the 
city. It has become hypercritical. A season 
at the summer resorts would put new blood 
and kindHer feelings into it. For one, I 
take the train to-morrow for Castle Crags. 
I bid you, my good fellow-mystics, good 
day." 

As the Poet passed through the Office 
Boy's sanctum he was arrested with a de- 
fiant, '' Say ! " 

There was no help for it and no rescue 
possible. " Well ? " answered the Poet, 
tentatively. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 205 

" Are you de Editor ? *' 

The Poet's modest explanation was un- 
heeded. 

" I brung up a poem here two weeks 
ago on ' The Cooing Dove/ I want ter 
know why it has not been brung out. Fm 
no tenderfoot, der you see, an' if that 'ere 
poem don't see light in next month's maga- 
zine there'll be trouble. You sabe ! I 
don't forget faces, and I've yourn spotted. 
You'll miss about twelve feet of that yellow 
alfalfa yer so all-fired proud of Now does 
' The Cooing Dove ' go, or ain't I no 
poet ? " 

The Poet gave his word that " The Coo- 
ing Dove" would coo in large pica, and 
thanked Heaven that he was leaving for 
Castle Crags. -Whereupon it was at once 
deemed best that the Editor should recu- 
perate at Napa Soda ins tan ter. 

The Office Boy. — " Proof ! " 



XVII 

THE Parson has joined the " Sons of the 
American Revolution." 
He was literally driven to it by the Par- 
soness, who, now that the children are all 
settled away from home, has been hunt- 
ing up her forebears. A month ago the 
Parson knew the names of his father and 
his grandfather. Of late, every sheet of 
loose paper in the office contains a rough 
sketch of the genealogical tree. He talks 
of Mindwell who died of spasms in the 
fourth month of her existence as familiarly 
as though she were the offspring of one of 
his parishioners instead of his great-great- 
great-great-aunt, twice removed. The other 
day he stopped the machinery of the Sanc- 
tum while he told us a thrilling tale of how 
Steadfast was personally thanked by General 
206 



As Talked in the Sanctum 207 

Washington for taking prisoner twenty-four 
Hessians at Monmouth. Steadfast was the 
particular ancestor that had the honor of 
making it possible for the Parson to bear on 
his lapel the proud insignia of the order of 
" The Sons of the American Revolution." 

I think we were all a little jealous of the 
Parson, although we openly joked him on 
his weakness ; for it would seem that the 
search after the elusive Revolutionary great- 
great-grandfather, of whom we have heard 
marvellous stories since our cradle days, be- 
comes as exciting as a tiger hunt. There is 
never any particular trouble in locating your 
great-grandfather or your many times great- 
grandfather. You soon discover his birth, 
marriage, and death, that he was a select- 
man, justice, or elder, and a good honest 
farmer or tradesman, in and about Colonial 
times; but the heroic ancestor who bore 
arms that the Nation might be free, soon 
proves as hard to grasp and hold as an eel. 
There is no doubt that he fought in the 



2o8 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Connecticut line. There is no reason to 
think that the story of his personally cap- 
turing twenty-four Hessians has been ex- 
aggerated. You have worshipped many a 
time at the shrine of the old flintlock that 
he bore at Monmouth, and yet the hard- 
hearted society will not take you in until 
you actually know the letter of his company 
and the number of his regiment. Our an- 
cestors do not seem to have had proper 
appreciation of their duty toward their pos- 
terity. It is not every man that can become 
an ancestor. Our Revolutionary fathers, like 
Napoleon's marshals, should have realized 
that they were ancestors, and that, sometime 
within the next two hundred years, a great- 
great-grandchild would wish to date from 
them and join the sons or daughters of the 
Revolution. It was Washington's duty to 
have brevetted every private in the Conti- 
nental Line at least a major, on retirement. 
It is a humiliating thing to have to own 
up that you came down from a private, or 



As Talked in the Sanctum 209 

even a sergeant-major. Washington, who 
thought of so much, should have thought 
of this. Was he not the Father of his 
Country ? 

The Parson's ancestor seems to have been 
so glad when the war closed that he settled 
quietly down and never ran for office or 
applied for a pension. From the day when 
peace was declared, the family records do 
not even make mention of a fight in church 
over a choir. To the shame of his pos- 
terity, he did not strive to realize in any 
way on his Commander's thanks for captur- 
ing the two dozen odd Hessians. An an- 
cestor who has so little regard for the glory 
of the family tree does not deserve to have 
a great-great-great-grandchild in the " Sons 
of the American Revolution." The Parson 
feels this blot on the escutcheon keenly, 
almost as keenly now as the good Parsoness. 

It was one of the Occasional Visitor's 
grandchildren that solved the question for 
us the other day. The Parson was fondly 



2IO As Talked in the Sanctum 

boasting, in his dear quiet way, of the good 
blood in his veins. The little fellow listened 
thoughtfully and respectfully until he heard 
the Occasional Visitor acknowledge that he 
could not join the " Sons " ; then he flew to 
his sire's defence. 

" My grandpa has just as good blood as 
any one if he can't join the society, and twice 
as good veins. Haven't you, Grandpa ? " 
he finished triumphantly. 

It is something to have good veins in 
these degenerate days. 

When we came to discussing seriously the 
Parson and his Revolutionary ancestor, after 
the good man had departed, we were surprised 
to discover how much our man of peace and 
good-will valued the bloody deeds, and how 
he deprecated his later, uneventful life. Not 
that we did not all agree with him ; but it 
gives one a start to be brought face to face 
with the fact that after all these centuries of 
cultivation and civilization we are nothing 
but barbarous war-dogs at heart. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 2 1 1 

The Occasional Visitor's Revolutionary 
ancestor was a minister, a godly man who 
wrote a godly book, and yet, on the genea- 
logical tree, he is placed far below the 
farmer brother who cultivated a little farm 
on the Indian borderland with a gun in one 
hand and a plough in the other, and who left 
the plough to follow Ethan Allen to Ticon- 
deroga. The faint odor of dried scalps and 
the perfume of gunpowder smother the es- 
sence of the godly life and the reminiscent 
aroma of musty tomes. 

The descendants of the illustrious Ben- 
jamin Franklin need never expect to out- 
rank the descendants of the savage old 
warrior, Ethan Allen, or the obstinate old 
fighter, Israel Putnam. It is better to have 
been a sergeant-major even, and, single- 
handed, to have captured twenty-four Hes- 
sians, than to have been a Colonial Governor ; 
while a Colonial Doctor of Divinity is passed 
over in pitying silence. Four-fifths of the 
Christian world would rather boast of being 



212 As Talked in the Sanctum 

a great-great-great-something of Richard the 
Lion-Hearted than of Shakspere. 

And yet all of our Revolutionary an- 
cestors could not have been fighting farmers. 
Some of them were soap-boilers, button- 
makers, anchor-smiths, and candle-makers. 
Still, that is never mentioned. The tiller 
of the soil was of the baronial class, although 
the soap-boiler may have been his own 
brother and have captured twenty-two more 
Hessians, and run for office after the war. 

The Reader. — " While I am ready to 
give up laughing at the once pitied genea- 
logical 'crank,' I wish to protest against 
the habit my neighbors have of tracing 
themselves back to English Barons and 
French Counts. I am willing to concede 
that the Mayflower was larger than the Great 
Eastern^ and that the families of Lord Fairfax 
and Lord Baltimore were the most numer- 
ous on earth ; but I cannot be expected to 
bow to the lady next door because she 
calmly asserts that, by rights, her father is 



As Talked m the Sanctum 213 

the only true Earl of Tallpuddle, and she 
should be known as Lady Maud. The 
mere fact that my name happens to be 
Hapsburg does not make me, an American 
citizen, the Crown Prince of Austria. If 
I believe in your genealogy back to the 
time when your ancestor came over in an 
emigrant ship, I think I may be excused for 
smiling at you when you claim kinship with 
George III. or Guy Fawkes." 

The Artist. — "I move that the Reader 
be excused." 

The Reader, — " Insomuch as I am confess- 
ing and the Artist so freely grants me abso- 
lution, I feel encouraged to unburden my 
mind on the subject. There is another class 
of individuals that tire me. The Editor 
complains that our Revolutionary fathers did 
not realize that they were ancestors. To 
me, that Is the grandest thing about them, 
— their glorious unconsciousness. Had 
they been posing for history we should still 
be a Colony. To the actors, there was 



214 ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

nothing picturesque in the crossing of the 
Delaware. Washington and his Httle band 
had no thought of the fame the act would 
bring them on the front of a fire insurance 
calendar. I doubt if the tattered, starving, 
frozen veterans at Valley Forge could have 
been more picturesque had they been deliber- 
ately posing, yet the only thought they had 
of their posterity was to give them all the 
rights of man. We have grown wiser since, 
studying the mistakes of our ancestors, and, 
to-day, when one of our neighbors achieves 
riches and is elected to the Senate of the 
United States, he begins to prepare for the 
admiration of those that are to follow. He 
carefully puts aside his boot-jacks, the coat 
he wore when he took the oath of office, 
the forks that were used when he had 
the President at his table, his manicure 
set (unused), his shaving-mug, a hat, a 
pocket-book (most interesting), a pipe pre- 
sented by the convicts of the State Peniten- 
tiary as a mark of esteem, and a cane made 



As Talked in the Sanctum 215 

from the wood of his first rocking-chair. 
He has his picture painted heroic size, in 
the attitude of Henry Clay. He discovers a 
coat-of-arms and by it proves, a mere noth- 
ing, that if he chose — but he is above all 
that — he could lay claim to the blood of 
Warwick, or even Cromwell. He prepares 
himself for posterity, and his supreme ego- 
tism makes him unaware of the sneers and 
laughter of his own generation. A dozen 
busts of himself adorn the palatial home, 
which he has built for the family castle, and 
which the heirs will sell or present to the 
city for a Museum or Art Gallery within a 
year after his death. He gives a statue of 
himself to the Park Commissioners and 
another to some near-by university which 
he has endowed. Such is the professional 
ancestor ! It is unnecessary to name names. 
You all know the species. Should it be 
encouraged ? " 

The Artist, — "It should be. I would 
not take all the humor out of life." 



2i6 As Talked in the Sanctum 

The Contributor, — "I am looking forward 
to the time when genealogy will be studied 
as a science by the aid of which the irrevoca- 
ble laws of nature in human culture can and 
will be as definitely determined as in agri- 
culture, horticulture, or the raising of live 
stock. In the perfect genealogy I want every 
family's inherent weaknesses, mental and 
moral, physical and intellectual, set down as 
truly and as honestly as its strong points. 
Then it will be an easy matter to determine 
what men have been and what v/e may expect 
for the future. If a young man or young 
woman has such an open book before him or 
her, there will be more judicious marriages 
and less suffering from ignorance. If you 
wish to unite yourself with a family of brains, 
you will not expect anything from a single 
line of muscle. If it is a Christian family 
that you wish to bring into the world, you 
will not be aided by a family whose genealogy 
shows a line of sceptics. Blood tells every 
time; only one is apt to mistake blood. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 217 

The scholar, the Christian, or the inventor 
owes more to the blood of his ancestors than 
to his own efforts. In the introduction of 
every genealogy I would have copied the 
Parable of the Sower. Although the seed 
was of the same quality and sown by the 
same hand, it produced widely different re- 
sults, some thirty, some sixty, and some an 
hundred fold ; and some sprang up to wither 
awav; and because, while some seeds fell in 
good soil, others fell by the wayside and on 
stony places, so, in our marriages, look for 
success where there are sound heads, healthy 
bodies, and honest hearts. Such should be 
„,y genealogy, even if I failed to get 
into the 'Sons' or was forced to admit 
that my ancestor was a crippled Colonial 
cobbler, who stayed quietly at home and 
sent anonymously every fifth pair of his 
laboriously made shoes to the freezing 
men at Valley Forge, while the Parson s 
fighting ancestor was capturing his score 
of Hessians." 



2i8 ^s Talked in the Sanctum 

The Poet. — " Sublime. That is good 
enough for the Parson." 

The Contributor. — "I am not jealous of 
the Parson. I am glad he belongs to the 
' Sons.' I believe in knowing who your an- 
cestors are, even if you must have them 
made to order by a second-rate portrait 
painter. It all stimulates love of country, 
and makes anarchy and foreign meddling 
impossible. Let every man claim that his 
great-great-grandfather captured twenty-four 
Hessians in the Revolution. Whether he 
did or not, it will make your children will- 
ing to undertake it some day if the occasion 
ever occurs. Selah ! " 

The Bookkeeper. — " There is a German 
lady out here who wishes to read a two-quire 
ballad to the Editor." 

The Office Boy. — " Proof ! " 



XVIII 

" T HAVE often wondered/* remarked the 

A Contributor, "why some one has not 

laid the charge of plagiarism at my door.'* 

The Reader. — " There may be reasons 
that would never suggest themselves to you.'* 

The Contributor, — "Indeed! I admit 
that I am not what might be called a popu- 
lar author, but I am a voluminous one and 
a wide reader. Again and again I have 
caught myself plagiarizing, sometimes my- 
self, ofttimes my favorite authors. 

" Within the year I have read an article 
in a magazine that I had read not a month 
before in a New York publication. I did 
not feel called upon to announce my dis- 
covery to the world ; for the plagiarism was 
an improvement. I remember writing a 
story, one winter. I worked hard over it. 
I felt inspired. The plot slowly, but surely, 



220 As Talked in the Sanctum 

developed. Incidents grew Into scenes, and 
what, at first, seemed to be embryo thoughts, 
gradually formed themselves into rounded 
paragraphs. At last, it was finished. I read 
it aloud to the family. As I read, something 
about it all seemed strangely familiar, and as 
if led by an unseen hand I arose, went to 
my library, took down an old scrap-book, 
and turned to my story with a well-known, 
but almost forgotten, author's name signed 
to it. It was a bitter moment, and the 
experience w^as curious. For years I dis- 
trusted myself, and even to-day I am always 
expecting some one to rise up and demand 
an explanation and apology.'* 
The Artist. — " You flatter us." 
The Poet. — "Our Contributor says of 
himself as Hawesworth said of Johnson, 
* You have a memory that would convict 
any author of plagiarism in any court of 
literature in the world.' " 

The plagiarism hunter found plenty of 
sport in the literature of the last campaign. 



As Talked in the Sanctum 221 

Moreover, it was wonderful how boldly the 
profession was carried on, and how little 
attention was paid to the revelations of the 
plagiarism-hunter. A few years ago half the 
big New York papers devoted a page a day 
of parallel column to convict one of our 
Senators of stealing an oration. It seemed 
to be a clear case, but the Senator got the 
credit of the oration, and the very name of 
the original orator is lost. In any case, he 
improved upon it, which met all of Byron s 
requirements of a plagiarist: "A good 
thought is often far better expressed at 
second-hand than at first utterance. If rich 
material has fallen into incompetent hands, 
it would be the height of injustice to debar 
a more skilful artisan from taking possession 
of it and working it up." 

The campaign plagiarist, in the maga- 
zines and out, works, generally, on the 
same model, — in an article on some phase 
of the burning questions of the day he 
combines extracts, without credit or quota- 



222 As Talked in the Sanctum 

tion marks, from speeches, essays, editorials, 
statistics, and campaign literature, under one 
head, and signs his name to the pot-pourri 
as the veritable author. He does it skil- 
fully, therefore he is excused with a smile. 
Again, he is within the Byronic definition : 
" Plagiarism, to be sure, is branded of old, 
but is never criminal except when done 
in a clumsy way, like steaUng among the 
Spartans." 

In August, 1894, there appeared in our 
magazine a story called " Kaala, the Flower 
of Lanai,*' rather a pretty bit of Hawaiian 
folk-lore. The writer's name was Carey, 
and his manuscript had been in the Sanctum 
since the November previous. On the fol- 
lowing Sunday, after the appearance of the 
magazine, one of the big dailies had a 
Hawaiian tale entitled, " Kaala, the Flower 
of Lanai," reproducing our story without 
either credit or signature. Very promptly 
the magazine called the attention of the 
newspaper to the apparent theft, whereupon 



As Talked in the Sanctum 223 

the newspaper demanded an explanation 
from one Hayne, the ambitious author who 
had sold it the manuscript. Hayne promptly 
denied having seen our August number, and 
proved beyond argument that his "copy" 
had for several weeks previous been in the 
newspaper's possession. The tale was writ- 
ten the preceding January, he claimed, and, 
like Carey, he was unable to conceive how 
his exact ideas and phrases could possibly 
have occurred to any one else. Further, to 
complicate the situation, an ex-United States 
Minister to Hawaii wrote, referring us to 
King Kalakaua^s volume, " The Legends 
and Myths of Hawaii," for the original 
version of Kaala. Both the contributors, 
however, denied any knowledge of the exist- 
ence of the book, and a month later a 
Honolulu paper wrote an editorial denounc- 
ing the editor of this magazine for stealing, 
bodily, word for word, the story " Kaala," 
from its old files, and signing a fictitious 
name to it. 



224 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

And that was not the end. A year later 
a well-known Hawaiian gentleman, of good 
literary standing, submitted " Kaala," the 
same old " Kaala," even to the punctuation 
marks, for the magazine's consideration. 
It was not considered. The same arrange- 
ment of gray matter could not have been 
in all these brains — or was it possible ? 
Only the X-ray will ever reveal. 

Two years ago there was received in the 
Sanctum a delicious Irish story that was read 
with enthusiasm and published with a blare 
of trumpets. It was out of the ordinary 
— full of delightful waggish wit and pictu- 
resque conceits. From the opening sentence 
it brought a smile to the lips, and left a feel- 
ing of good digestion. At once the writer 
was asked to become a regular contributor, 
but before his next was received the follow- 
ing letter came to the editor's desk : — 

" The paper in the last issue of your magazine 
entitled 'Told in the Dog- Watch,' by 'T. J. B.,' 
is a plagiarism. It is taken from page 580 of ' Bur- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 225 

ton's Cyclopedia of Wit and Humor,' published 
by the Appletons in 1858. Its real title is 'Darby 
Doyle's Voyage to Quebec/ " 

"T. J. B." may have a plausible excuse. 
Yet I think that even he would recognize 
a difference between his methods and Doc- 
tor Holmes's, who confessed, " I have often 
felt, after writing a line that pleased me more 
than common, that it was not new, and was 
perhaps not my own." Neither do I think 
that even Byron would pat " T. J. B." on 
the back and remark, as he has done : " Com- 
mend me to a pilferer. You may laugh at 
it as a paradox, but I assure you that the most 
original writers are the greatest thieves." 

The Reviewer. — "I never heard of any 
one plagiarizing the Poet." 

The Poet. — " No one ever plagiarized 
Virgil." 

The Reader. — "Yet one must get the 
straw for his bricks somewhere." 

Successful plagiarism all depends upon 
the caliber of the plagiarist. To copy ver- 



226 As Talked in the Sanctum 

batim requires no brain, but to draw from 
Homer and Theocritus, as Virgil did, and 
leave behind the " i^neid " requires some- 
thing more than a lead pencil and white 
paper. It was Tennyson who spoke of the 
" masterly plagiarisms " of Virgil and Mil- 
ton, and yet his work is a perfect mosaic 
of gems from almost every writer in ancient 
and modern times. Of Milton it has been 
said : " The lilt of old songs was in his ears, 
the happy phrases of old poets, the jewels, 
five words long, from old treasures. He had 
the opulent memory of the profound stu- 
dent, and these things crowded thickly into 
his thought with each new suggestion from 
without." i^sop's fables can be found in 
the older Hindoo literature. Goethe never 
claimed all the credit for his immortal 
"Faust." "What," he asks, "would re- 
main to me if this art of appropriation 
were derogatory to genius ? Every one 
of my writings has been furnished to me 
by a thousand different poems, a thousand 



As Talked in the Sanctum 227 

different things. My work is an aggrega- 
tion of beings taken from the whole of 
nature; it bears the name of Goethe." 

It would have done the soul of Moliere 
good if he could have made the same frank 
confession regarding " Don Juan." Wash- 
ington Irving " lifted " the " Story of the 
German Student/' in the " Tales of a Trav- 
eller," from one of Hoffmann's " Contes 
Nocturnes," and the very same story was 
afterward used by Alexandre Dumas the 
elder, in " La Dame au Collier de Velours." 

Goldsmith's " Madame Blaize " is a close 
translation of a poem by the Frenchman De 
la Monnoye. Thackeray's " Romance of 
the Rhine " is nothing more than Dumas's 
" Othon I'Archer." Tennyson's " Enoch 
Arden " was probably modelled on Words- 
worth's "Michael," his "In Memoriam " 
was suggested by Petrarch, his " Dream of 
Fair Women " by Chaucer, his " Godiva " 
by Moultrie, and his " Dora " by Miss 
Mitford. The debts of Boccaccio, of De la 



228 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Salle, of Chaucer, Shakspere, and Moliere 
to the old French " Fabliaux" will never be 
discharged. 

One of the most amusing cases of uncon- 
scious plagiarism that was tragically comical 
in its results happened to a once well-known 
Philadelphia magazine. Its editor unearthed 
in a German monthly Edward Everett Hale's 
" Man Without a Country." It struck him 
as one of the best things of the century, and 
he promptly retranslated it back into its 
original English, and published it in the 
magazine with a salvo of hurrahs that was 
heard from Bangor to the Golden Gate. 
He and his magazine were laughed into 
their graves by a good-natured republic. 

The modern writer is indebted more than 
he realizes to the ancients for the most con- 
ventional phrases. On three successive pages 
of Fielding may be discovered the well-worn 
expressions, " The eternal fitness of things,'* 
" Distinction without a difference," and "An 
amiable weakness." Sir Walter Scott is 



As Talked in the Sanctum 229 

caught using in " St. Ronan's Well," " Fat, 
fair, and forty." 

The Bible is full of epigrams and catch- 
words that are discovered and rediscovered 
yearly by every new batch of strictly original 
literateurs. There are certain expressions that 
are always used without quotation marks, and 
yet not one in a hundred stops to think 
from whence they come ; for example, 
" It is not good that the man should be 
alone," " There were giants in those days," 
"In a green old age," " Darkness which 
may be felt," "The wife of thy bosom," 
" He kept him as the apple of his eye," 
" Quit yourselves like men," " A man after 
his own heart," "I am escaped with the skin 
of my teeth," " Great men are not always 
wise." It must be annoying to the author, 
as it is to the inventor, to stumble on a 
brand new idea, and then be informed that 
it is as old as the Alexandrian Library. 

The Contributor, — "I have often made 
up my mind, after listening to one of the 



230 As Talked in the Sanctttm 

Parson's sermons, that there is such a thing 
as being too original." 

The Parson. — " Thank you. I can't say 
as much for this conversation." 

The Bookkeeper. — " Joaquin Miller wants 
to know if it is safe for him to come in ? " 

The Office Boy. — " Proof! " 



XIX 

I KEEP a note-book, — not a large one, 
— and in it jot down things that come 
to me as I read — thoughts that I imagine 
are original. A passage in a novel calls 
forth an idea that, nine times out of ten, 
it was never intended to suggest. Of all 
writers Balzac, 1 think, is the most fertile 
in this direction. The Contributor main- 
tains that Balzac tires him, that he can- 
not even keep the thread of the narrative, 
much less go afield for the original gems ; 
but, with me, it is so entirely different that 
I am inchned to charge the old man with 
falling into his dotage. Balzac acts like a 
stimulant. My mind is never so active as 
when reading " Pere Goriot " or " Eugenie 
Grander." It seems to grasp every word, 
to read between the lines, and to look into 
231 



232 As Talked in the Sanctum 

th^ great Frenchman's soul for the thought 
that he discarded in weaving the superb 
fabric. I keep the note-book, as I have 
found it impossible to hold and summon 
up at will the ideas that go dancing before 
my eyes. 

Now the note-book has discovered to me 
another phase of my disposition, at which 
again, the Contributor pooh-poohs. It is 
this : after chronicling my thoughts, which, 
if they come to me while reading Balzac, 
have a philosophical twist, I find that it 
may be months before I am in the exact 
mood to take advantage of them. I admit, 
as I glance them over with a firm intention 
of using them, that they are not half bad, 
but — but — for some reason I pass them 
by. It was said of Bob Burdette that he 
discovered his talent as a humorist while 
trying to amuse his dying wife ; so, if you 
can appear gay when you are sad, instead 
of being simply stolid, something has been 
achieved. 



As Talked in the Sancttim 233 

There are times when you can read any- 
book that comes to hand. And there are 
times when you crave for inspiration or ab- 
sobjtely require a mental stimulant. Then it 
is that your favorite authors become a bless- 
ing. Whether they be Balzac, Thackeray, 
Dickens, Hugo, Bret Harte, or Haggard, 
the result is the same. Champagne has no 
fascination when you want beer. 

With absolute failure, mayhap possible 
poverty, staring you in the face, it may take 
a great exercise of will power to sit calmly 
down to a novel, even by a prime favorite ; 
but it is worth the effort. You think, " I 
will read and enjoy while I can ; for the 
time may come, at any moment, when I 
cannot afford the luxury, and the memory 
of this will be a well-spring of pleasure and 
a solace." Then the power of the book 
enters into you and drives you to the very 
effort that surmounts the obstacles that lie 
in your path. " If I must fail, I will fail 
doing my best." And then I win. It is 



234 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

a surprise that never grows stale. All, even 
the Contributor, acknowledge these mental 
struggles and self-doubts ; but only a few 
recognize and profit by accepting them. 

There is one little plot for a story in my 
note-book that I have always intended to 
work up. As I remember it, it was a true 
story, but when or where its incidents 
occurred I cannot recollect. Many and 
many a time I have paused when I came 
to it, and remarked that it was a capital plot 
for a child's story, and one that would bring 
the tears. I have shrunk from the effort 
of dressing the skeleton ; for in order to 
put the proper clothes on it I should have 
to draw too heavily from my own scant 
wardrobe. The story was pathetic in the 
extreme, and in order to make the most of 
it I realized that I must get teary in its 
writing, or my readers would never do so. 

Charles Warren Stoddard said of the first 
editor of this magaztne, " Once, when he 
had taken me to task for a bit of careless 



As Talked in the Sancttim 235 

work, then under his critical eye, and com- 
plained of a false number, I thought to turn 
away wrath by a soft answer; I told him 
that I had just met a man Vv^ho had wept 
over a certain passage in one of his sketches.'* 

"Well," said Harte, "I wept when I 
wrote it." 

Here is the outline of my story as I noted 
it. You will see why I hesitate to bring my- 
self to the proper pitch, and you will recog- 
nize the artistic possibilities. 

Unrequited Devotion 

Little boy is cast away in a flood on a timber. 

His faithful dog swims out to him, and they are 
carried away together. 

They live for two days floating down a great 
river. 

The dog sustains the boy after he is exhausted. 

The dog's barking attracts attention. 

A rescuing party saves the boy, but heartlessly 
allows the dog to perish. 

A master might expand the sixty words to 
three thousand and make of it a sweet little 



236 As Talked in the Sanchim 

classic that would rank with some of Hans 
Christian Andersen's ; and yet the thought 
comes up, could he paint a more pathetic 
picture with all his art than the tender, sym- 
pathetic imagination of any child would 
weave about this tiny outline the moment 
he read it ? Of course it is this quality of 
expressing what one feels that makes the 
author ; yet, again, would it not take a 
greater genius to fill a book v/ith just such 
tales in miniature than to pad out half a 
dozen to occupy the same number of pages? 

In the one, everything is left to the imag- 
ination ; in the other, nothing. One is a 
song without words, the other a well-studied 
harmony. 

Such a narrative, if I am not unduly con- 
fident, would bring out powers of descrip- 
tion in the young mind that would do more 
for its proper development than a hundred 
fairy tales of two syllables. 

The Professor. — "I am ready to admit 
that the Editor's story might be used as a 



As Talked in the Sanctum 237 

text for a Saturday afternoon exercise. One 
or two in a class of thirty would arise to its 
possibilities ; the rest would probably suggest 
where the boy could get another dog cheap. 
The young mind is full of unconscious 
humor, but seldom weighed down with 
artistic pathos. I gave out as a subject for 
composition, ' Winter.' My school was up 
near the snow line, and not one in it had ever 
experienced a San Francisco winter, although 
they were perfectly familiar with the legends 
of roses and oranges at Christmas. The 
average result of what I obtained would read 
somewhat as follows : — 

« ' Winter is the coldest season of the year, be- 
cause it comes in winter mostly. In San Francisco 
winter comes in summer and their Christmas and 
Fourth of July gets all kerfuddled. I wish winter 
came in summer in this country, for then we could 
go skating barefooted and we could snowball with- 
out getting our fingers cold. It snows more in the 
winter than any other season. This is because 
snow seeks its own altitude. When it don't, it is 
not snow. A wicked boy stole my skates and ran 



238 As Talked in the Sanctum 

ofF with them, and I couldn't catch him. Ma 
says judgment will overtake him. Well, if judg- 
ment does, it will have to be pretty lively in its 
legs, for that boy can run bully.' 

" The result of an examination brought a 
number of definitions that would have made 
Bill Nye famous. 

' Anatomy is how to take care of the bones.' 
' The digestive fluids are tea, coffee, rum, beer, 

and sometimes alcohol.' 

' The pancreatic juice is secreted in the colon.' 
' Five important organs of digestion are the 

heart, chest, liver, brains, and gizzard.' 
' Cursory : The act of cursing.' 
' Lambrequin : A young lamb.' 
' Patriotic : My Country 'tis of Thee.' " 

" Which goes to prove that truth is funnier 
than fiction," remarked the Reader. " I 
still laugh at the mistakes in pronunciation 
of the Sunday-school Superintendent of my 
boyhood, who insisted on calling Artaxerxes 
' Arte Texas,' and invariably spoke of Joseph 
going down into Egg-pit. Still, the old 
style of pronunciation and spelling is chang- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 239 

ing so rapidly that who knows but that the 
next generation will be so pronouncing 
Egypt. Spelling-books and grammars get 
old-fashioned almost as rapidly as clothes. 
We once placed the accent on the last sylla- 
ble. Now it is quite the thing to put it on 
the first. Remember this, if you wish to be 
considered cultivated. I have often thought 
what havoc, say, the President of Harvard 
might make with our ever changing language, 
and what trouble he would cause us plodders, 
by transferring the accents on half a hundred 
common words. He could do it as easily as 
some one changed per-fect'-ed to per'-fect-ed, 
Cle-o-pa'-tra to Cle-op'-a-tra, com-par'-a-ble 
to com'-par-a-bie, op-po'-nent to op'-po-nent, 
in'-ter-est-ing to in-ter-est'-ing, and dec'-or- 
a-tive to de-cor'-a-tive." 

It is always a grave question whether it 
is worth while to chronicle the trivial every- 
day life of the Sanctum, and yet in its way 
it reflects the doings of a greater world. 
There are people that you never would be- 



240 As Talked in the Sanctum 

lieve could be imposed upon, people of 
judgment and experience, and yet like our 
hardy old Contributor they have in their 
time trod very near the danger line. It 
seems that the Contributor had received 
from time to time tempting letters from a 
certain New York firm of bankers by the 
suggestive name of " U. R. Green Co." 
Judging from these, it would appear that 
U. R. Green Co. know their business. 
Everything they touch turns into gold. 
They are philanthropists as well as specu- 
lators, and are willing, for a small sum — 
two hundred and fifty dollars — down, to 
share with their friends this coveted power. 
It is never for an instant a question with 
them how the cat will jump, nor does it 
make any particular difference whether the 
market goes up or down, it goes their way 
and yours. Twenty per cent per month is 
what they guarantee, although they gracefully 
intimate that thirty per cent may be expected. 
In spite of himself the Contributor fell to 



As Talked in the Sanctum 241 

figuring. In five months his two hundred 
and fifty dollars would be five hundred dol- 
lars ; in ten months, one thousand dollars ; 
in fifteen months, two thousand dollars ; in 
twenty months, four thousand dollars ; and 
in twenty-five months he would be worth 
eight thousand dollars. Now our Contribu- 
tor has two hundred and fifty dollars in the 
savings bank that is only drawing five per 
cent a year, and the fever of speculation was 
upon him. The deposit, however, is pay- 
able to the order of Mrs. Contributor, and 
a family council revealed the fact that Mrs. 
C. had for some days been pondering over 
an advertisement that had been running 
in The Housewife s Friend^ which read as 
follows : — 

" A Fortune. — I have a simple scheme for 
making money rapidly, which I will mail to any 
one on receipt of ten cents. Address I. M. Innit, 
Banker. Box D, New York." 

Mrs. C. did not wish to risk, two hun- 
dred and fifty dollars, but was willing to 



242 As Talked in the Sanctum 

invest ten cents for so promising a receipt. 
As a compromise, it was agreed to test the 
advertisement first, and if it turned out sat- 
isfactory to look farther into the U. R. 
Green Co.'s proposals. 

In twelve days the following reply came 
to hand, which was noted rather for its force 
than for its eloquence. 

" Dear Madam : You ask me to tell you 
how to make more money rapidly. Fish for 
suckers as I do. — I. M. Innit.'* 

It would be interesting to know how 
many times a month so palpable a fraud 
entices dimes from a good-natured public. 
It would hardly seem possible that any one 
could be taken in by it, and yet it must re- 
quire at least two hundred answers a month 
to pay for the one-inch "ad." in The House- 
wife s Friend, I remember an " ad." that 
ran in all the country papers in Southern 
New York, where potato bugs luxuriated, 
advising the farmer that for ten cents a 
receipt for the absolute extermination of the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 243 

little pest would be sent. Hundreds ac- 
cepted the invitation, and in reply received 
two small blocks of wood and the following 
printed directions : — 

"Catch the bug and place it on the block 
marked A, then press firmly with block B, and 
the bug will cease to trouble you." 

The Parson, — "Which reminds me of 
the story of the tramp who contracted to 
kill every rat in a roadside inn for a dinner 
and a drink. The landlord accepted the 
offer and paid in advance. When he had 
finished his repast, the tramp selected a 
formidable club, quietly seated himself on 
the lawn outside within a circle of admiring 
villagers, and said in stentorian tones as he 
rolled up his shirt sleeves, " Now, bring on 
your rats ! " 

We realized that the kindly Parson had 
related the familiar old tale to cover the 
Contributor's retreat and cut off the Artist's 
jeers. 

The Typewriter, — "A lady wishes to 



244 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

know if you will give her a year's subscrip- 
tion for a twenty-verse poem on ' Suffering 
Cuba ' ? " 

The Office Boy, — " Proof ! " 



XX 

As children, we told fortunes on the 
buttons of our elders' coats thus : — 
"Rich man, Poor man. Beggar man, Thief; 
Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief.'* 
If we particularly disliked the victim, it 
was arranged so the stop would come on 
"Beggar man" or « Thief.' ' I do not 
know who was the inventor of the formula. 
I wish I did, as the discovery would make 
both the unknown author's reputation and 
my own. Offhand I will hazard it came 
from the Orient, for there I found that to 
be a beggar was as much a profession as to 
be a doctor. The Contributor was com- 
plaining of the very unprofessional conduct 
of a beggar on Battery Street, who first 
asked for the price of a drink, pleading that 
he was the father of a family, and then 

A H5 



246 As Talked in the Sanctum 

cursed long and deep because of a prof- 
fered soup ticket. The man was not a pro- 
fessional, or he would not have so laid 
himself open to a charge of " conduct un- 
becoming a gentleman and a beggar/* A 
professional would have said, " Beg your 
pardon," passed over to the other side of 
the street, and told his story to the Poet, 
whose heart is always open, but whose 
pocket is empty. 

A beggar must be a reader of character. 
On Decoration Day I met one who had 
taken the thirty-third degree. The very 
tones of his voice made me falter, and sent 
my hand pocketward. Before he had fin- 
ished his conte I had made up my mind 
that not less than four bits would answer. 
There was something about him that sug- 
gested a noble in exile or a great soul beat- 
ing itself to death against unresponsive 
rocks. " Can you blame me," he pleaded, 
" for begging for the bare necessities, when 
two million bushels of life-giving wheat from 



As Talked in the Sanctum 247 

the golden fields of California were left to 
the mercy of the weevil in the elevators of 
Contra Costa, waiting while their millionnaire 
owners cornered the market ? What was 
destroyed would have saved the famine in 
India or fed the unemployed of the Pacific 
Coast. Where is the justice ? But who 
am I that I should judge my neighbor ? " 
"Amen!" said I. And I was glad that 
for once my fifty cents were well invested. 
However, I do not believe in beggars, and 
I will wager that the Contributor was right 
in refusing to divide his slender salary with 
the blackguard who reviled him. 

Off and on for a month I have noticed 
an able-bodied man of middle age issue 
from the historic precincts of the " What 
Cheer House." He would walk leisurely 
up Montgomery Street to Market and turn 
up Market, continuing his stroll as far as 
the New City Hall, returning by way of 
Union Square, where he would rest and nap 
in the sun. The regularity and method of 



248 As Talked in the Sanctum 

these strolls, combined with the fact that he 
from time to time paused to speak a civil 
word to some well-dressed pedestrian, ex- 
cited my curiosity. A brief investigation 
developed the fact that the m.an was a beg- 
gar, and also that he was very successful. 
Twice I gave him a short bit. One day I 
met him in Union Square. The fog was 
rolling in from Golden Gate, and only here 
and there a tramp, too drunk to notice the 
moisture of the seats, marred the landscape. 
My friend was leaning against a tree, deeply 
intent on some figures in a greasy note- 
book. I stopped in front of him and he 
looked up, slipping the book into his 
pocket. 

"How's business?" I asked. 

He commenced to whine. 

" Never mind your regular story," I inter- 
rupted, " I know it. Answer my questions 
like a man, and you may add a dollar to your 
bank account." 

After a little preliminary skirmishing he 



As Talked in the Sanctum 249 

waxed confidential, and showed a pride in 
his profession and an unhallowed joy in his 
success that was gratifying. 

" I make it a rule/' in the firm, clear 
tones of a stockbroker, " never to walk 
less than one hundred blocks a day. It 
keeps up my muscle, aids digestion, and 
insures a good appetite." 

" And a thirst,*' I commented. 

"And a thirst," he went on, unabashed. 
" It is a very poor block that does not 
average two and one-half cents. Two 
blocks will more often net me ten cents." 

He consulted the aforementioned book. 

" Yes, the average of the past six months 
is five dollars a day, that is just five cents a 
block. I have been on this beat nearly a 
year now, and I have my regular customers. 
Excuse me a minute." 

He passed through the fog to the other 
side of the street and touched his hat to an 
elderly acquaintance of mine, who was com- 
ing dov/n the broad steps of the Pacific 



250 As Talked in the Sanctum 

Union Club. In a moment he had returned 
with a bright new quarter in his hand. 

" I told him my wife was better to-day," 
he said, smiling pleasantly, " and that she 
prayed for him night and day. Well, so 
long ! Your dollar passes the limit to-day 
— and business is over." 

About a week after he was in court 
charged with vagrancy. An officer had 
been watching as well as myself. With a 
great show of indignation my old friend 
arose and produced a bag containing four 
twenty-dollar gold pieces and enough change 
to bring the total to eighty-seven dollars. 
He was discharged for want of enough direct 
evidence, but he had an enemy in the hard- 
hearted officer who made it his business to 
watch him. Within another week there 
was evidence enough to send him to the 
workhouse. 

The Reader. — " Can you blame him ? 
Five dollars a day is the wages of a first- 
class mechanic. Why should not begging 



As Talked in the Sanctum 251 

become a profession when people are such 
easy game. The only thing to do is to 
call a policeman every time a fellow solicits 
alms, and yet if I did such a thing I should 
be pointed out on tlie street as a warning to 
all tender-hearted children." 

The Parson, — "I believe that I have 
given alms where they were deserved ; but 
I have never yet been quite sure." 

The Artist, — " For the sake of my profes- 
sion I trust the Sanctum will not completely 
aboHsh beggars. Who else would supply 
color and life to Italy ? What would Notre 
Dame or St. Peter's be without them ? 
Even the Pyramids and Pompey's Pillar 
would lose half their charm, stripped of their 
bands of backsheesh gatherers. Art must 
come to the rescue. The beggar is thrice 
welcome to all he gets from me." 

The Reviewer. — " Your cure, then, must 
be starvation." 

The Parson. — "I once heard a rather 
curious confession from a professional beg- 



252 As Talked in the Sanctum 

gar, which if true, and I believe it was, 
opened my eyes to the reckless way in 
which American beggars are made. ' I had 
been keeping a sidewalk stand for five years,' 
he said. ^ I worked hard and earned from 
three to four dollars a week. On that I 
lived. One night when I started to go 
home by the Mission street-cars I found 
that my pocket had been picked. It was 
too far to walk, so I decided to try and 
borrow a nickel. The first man to whom 
I told my story gave me a quarter without 
hesitation. All the way home I thought 
over it. A quarter was as much as I made 
clear at my stand many a day. It all ended 
by my selling out and going to begging, 
always telling my first story. I have done 
pretty well since and like the business.' " 

The Reviewer, — " Charge him to the 
Artist." 

The Occasional Visitor, — "In reading the 
resolutions passed by the Board of Council- 



As Talked in the Sanctum 253 

men of Canton, Mississippi, it struck me 
that bulls grow fat on the herbage of this 
country as well as on Erin's soil. Listen: — 

'i. Resolved^ by this Council, that we 
build a new jail. 

' 2. Resolved^ that the new jail be built 
out of the materials of the old jail. 

'3. Resolved, that the old jail be used till 
the new jail is finished.' " 

The Poet, — " Which is paralleled by Doc- 
tor Johnson's famous dictum that every 
momental inscription should be in Latin ; 
for that, being a dead language, it will 
always live." 

There must be some remedy for the 
beggar, some scheme whereby the profes- 
sional "unemployed" can be turned into 
good citizens. Joaquin Miller tried it in 
his little ranch on the Heights, but failed. 
Municipalities have tried, and philanthro- 
pists since the time of Nero have under- 
taken the job ; but only the cannibal has 



254 ^^ Talked in the Sanctum 

succeeded. The beggars own the world ; 
from the picturesque knaves of the "Arabian 
Nights " to our own Chinatown bummers, 
they fill a place in the great human comedy 
that force and education cannot usurp. They 
are more of a drain on a nation than ban- 
ditti and a far greater menace, and yet 
every scheme for their regeneration falls pow- 
erless. After all, they may be happy in 
their way, and life is fleeting. 

The old fellow who twice a year would 
slip into my neighbor's back-yard and have 
a fainting fit from feigned starvation believed 
himself as great an actor as Booth — and 
he was. His contortions were awful, and 
the smell of food caused him to lose con- 
sciousness. He fairly earned the nickels 
that were showered upon him from second- 
story windows, and no one ever complained 
to the police. I believe if every vagrant 
in the city were sent to the poor farm to- 
morrow, a new and just as vigorous a crop 
would spring up in twenty-four hours. 



As Talked in the Sanchim 255 

The Pastor. — "I would that good things 
were as tenacious of life." 

I wish to record here, as I close this 
random report of things " As Talked in the 
Sanctum," that I believe that patriotism needs 
culture, and that it is an element in man 
that flourishes like religion when the soil is 
prepared for it. For a century and more we 
have been worshipping the heroes of other 
countries. I once related to the Sanctum 
my feelings at the Hotel des Invalides as I 
stood between a French peasant in wooden 
shoes and an old oflicer of the Legion of 
Honor, silently worshipping at the stately 
tomb of the greatest of all Frenchmen. It 
seemed then that there could be no Ameri- 
can counterpart, that no American shrine 
would ever draw such never failing crowds 
as come daily there. Not long ago, when I 
was in New York, I took my little boy 
to the tomb of Grant, at Riverside. I did 
not expect to find more than a corporaFs 
guard of sightseers. I admit that curiosity 



256 As Talked in the Sanctum 

drew me. The name of Grant seemed 
plebeian by the side of that of the French 
Emperor. Vicksburg, Donelson, the Wil- 
derness, Appomattox, ran flat alongside 
Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and 
Waterloo. One was the soldier of a repub- 
lic, the other was the Man of Destiny. The 
great gray dome that surmounts the remains 
of our soldier is not hedged round with 
historic associations or emblazoned with 
regal memories, and yet I was not alone in 
my pilgrimage. There was a line three 
deep, a quarter of a mile long, passing in 
and around the crypt. It was not one 
crowd, but many, and all day long it swayed 
in a ceaseless throng. For a month this 
had been going on. Every head was uncov- 
ered as we entered the stately sarcophagus, 
and the soft light from above that fell on 
the tomb carried with it the same idealiza- 
tion that enshrouds the last resting place of 
that other warrior. The reverence was as 
genuine in the one as in the other — the 



As Talked in the Sanctum 257 

homage paid this republican hero was as sin- 
cere as that lavished on Frenchmen's demi- 
god. For the first time I appreciated at 
their full value the power and benefit of 
such national shrines. About it, from year 
to year, will crystallize a love of country and 
a pride of home. It is something that can 
be pointed to — something tangible. On it 
will feed patriotism ; and the tomb of the man 
who said, " Let us have peace," will become, 
to unborn generations, all that the golden 
dome of the Invalides is to France. 



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